The first history of American medical ethics published in more than a half century, Before Bioethics tracks the evolution of American medical ethics from colonial midwives and physicians' oaths to current bioethical controversies over abortion, AIDS, animal rights, and physician-assisted suicide.

• Preface


• Chapter 1: Introduction: On Medical Ethics and Morality


• Chapter 2: Midwives' Oaths of Fidelity and Diligence


• Chapter 3: A Medical Ethics of Fidelity, Chastity and Gentlemanly Honor


• Chapter 4: The Lecturers: Samuel Bard and Benjamin Rush


• Chapter 5: Codes of Medical Police and Ethics, 1806-1846


• Chapter 6: A National Code of Medical Ethics, 1847


• Chapter 7: Professional Medical Ethics 1848-1875: Abortion, Inquisition and Exclusion


• Chapter 8: The Anti-Code Revolt: Laissez Medical Faire Ethics, 1876-1979


• Chapter 9: Medical Ethics and the Research Imperative: 1800-1946


• Chapter 10: Explaining The Birth of Bioethics, 1947-1999

Robert Baker is William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy at Union College and Director of the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program. A four-time National Endowment for the Humanities awardee, Baker is founding chair of the Affinity Group on the History of Medical Ethics of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited numerous scholarly articles, reports and books, including the American Medical Ethics Revolution and The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics. Both books were awarded a citation by Choice, the journal of academic libraries, as an "outstanding book in the health sciences " for their respective years. Baker also co-authored a 2008 report on African American physicians and organized medicine that prompted the board of the AMA to apologize publicly for its past treatment of African American physicians.