"A Drug of Such Damn'd Nature": Trust, Education and the Hippocratic Oath in Shakespeare's Cymbeline and All's Well that Ends Well
Brian Quaranta, MD, MA, Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, Duke University Medical Center
Scientific and medical knowledge, in the wrong hands, is potentially dangerous. Despite this fact, there is today unchecked momentum toward making all such knowledge available to anyone who desires it. In a recent study, for example, a team of researchers at Yale conducted an experiment in which a special fluid called BrainEx, infused into the brains of pigs that had been decapitated and without nutrition for four hours, was shown to revive some electrical and cellular activity. The Yale scientists were complimented for publishing full and complete details of the remarkable infusion’s chemistry on the journal’s open access website.
Our philosophical and religious forefathers did not share this point of view. Plato and Aristotle were both well known for their practice of esoteric writing in order to protect themselves and the public from misunderstanding and potentially dangerous doctrine. Jesus of Nazareth also believed in the importance of withholding, at least temporarily, some material from some audiences, explaining that this was his motivation for the use of parables. Other New Testament writers adopted a similar position, distinguishing between the “milk” appropriate for new converts and the “meat” suitable for mature Christians. In later years, some church leaders, including Origen and Pope Innocent III, continued to claim that Christian doctrine must be parceled out with care, due to potential danger to the flock.
The Hippocratic Oath, in recognition of the dangers that medical knowledge can entail when placed in the wrong hands, requires the aspiring physician to swear that “I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to students bound by this contract and having sworn this Oath to the law of medicine, but to no others." Only those who had sworn to obey the Oath’s ethical pact were to be trusted to curate and use medical knowledge.
In this paper, I will reflect upon how the transmission of medical knowledge forms a pivotal plot point in two of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays; All’s Well that Ends Well and Cymbeline. In the former, the King of France experiences unrelenting suffering that his physicians cannot cure. Gerard de Narbon, the greatest of French physicians, has died, but the King is spared when it is revealed Gerard had passed on his medical skills to his daughter, Helena. In Cymbeline, the Queen of Britain, asks the court physician, Dr. Cornelius, to provide her with deadly poison, so that she can study it by experimenting on animals. Cornelius, recognizing her bad character, thwarts her purpose and thereby changes the outcome of the play.
As we develop new technologies such as BrainEx, we should stop to remember the concerns of our predecessors. If medicine is a learned profession, with a moral component to its practice, in which potentially dangerous information is mastered, then we should still consider the possibility - as the Hippocratic Oath requires, and as Shakespeare seems to confirm - that we take care with the way in which we choose to pass it on.
Our philosophical and religious forefathers did not share this point of view. Plato and Aristotle were both well known for their practice of esoteric writing in order to protect themselves and the public from misunderstanding and potentially dangerous doctrine. Jesus of Nazareth also believed in the importance of withholding, at least temporarily, some material from some audiences, explaining that this was his motivation for the use of parables. Other New Testament writers adopted a similar position, distinguishing between the “milk” appropriate for new converts and the “meat” suitable for mature Christians. In later years, some church leaders, including Origen and Pope Innocent III, continued to claim that Christian doctrine must be parceled out with care, due to potential danger to the flock.
The Hippocratic Oath, in recognition of the dangers that medical knowledge can entail when placed in the wrong hands, requires the aspiring physician to swear that “I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to students bound by this contract and having sworn this Oath to the law of medicine, but to no others." Only those who had sworn to obey the Oath’s ethical pact were to be trusted to curate and use medical knowledge.
In this paper, I will reflect upon how the transmission of medical knowledge forms a pivotal plot point in two of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays; All’s Well that Ends Well and Cymbeline. In the former, the King of France experiences unrelenting suffering that his physicians cannot cure. Gerard de Narbon, the greatest of French physicians, has died, but the King is spared when it is revealed Gerard had passed on his medical skills to his daughter, Helena. In Cymbeline, the Queen of Britain, asks the court physician, Dr. Cornelius, to provide her with deadly poison, so that she can study it by experimenting on animals. Cornelius, recognizing her bad character, thwarts her purpose and thereby changes the outcome of the play.
As we develop new technologies such as BrainEx, we should stop to remember the concerns of our predecessors. If medicine is a learned profession, with a moral component to its practice, in which potentially dangerous information is mastered, then we should still consider the possibility - as the Hippocratic Oath requires, and as Shakespeare seems to confirm - that we take care with the way in which we choose to pass it on.