Abstracts fra Bibliotek for Læger 3/2015

 

Leder: Herholdts lægeløfte fra 1815 bør nænsomt fremtidssikres
Redaktionen

Danish coroners and forensic pathologists in the period without police 1944-45

Bibl Læger 2015;207:92-121.

This paper investigates how Danish coroners, forensic experts and legal authorities of the state reacted to substitute the missing police during the last seven and a half months of the German occupation when the police was deported or went underground. Medical officers of health and forensic pathologists cooperated with public prosecutors and substituted the police by establishing themselves or involving other local officials as interrogators of witnesses in connection with the coroner‘s inquests. The Ministry of Justice reacted late and only after having been informed about an already established local solution. This solution was copied in a national circular two months after the police had disappeared, assigning the coronors and forensic pathologists extensive police authority. The level and quality of forensic activities was maintained fairly well, except for cases of »political murders«, where the gathered information was seemingly scantier. However, studies of literature and archives reveal that doctors and other employees at the Institute of Forensic Medicine actively gathered supplementary information about these murders, but kept some of it hidden and omitted from the official documents. It was handed over to the underground criminal police and sent to the reestablished police force after the liberation for the purpose of investigation.

Historisk tekst: Det danske lægeløfte af 1815
Johan Daniel Herholdt

Klassisk tekst: Den Hippokratiske ed

Originalartikel: Smerte – en filosofisk refleksion over smertebegrebet i medicinsk praksis
Lise Kirstine Gormsen

Pain – a reflection on the concept of pain in medical practice

Bibl Læger 2015;207:192-213

Pain is a complex phenomenon in a complex context where pain is not always the central issue. Doctors and scientists in clinical pain research mostly regard pain as a pseudo-physical object and as such investigate it with biomedical methods. Pain is, however, not a pseudo-physical object. Pain is a mental phenomenon with no extension or stability. It is transformed and changed through our interactions with others. In consequence, medical research does not fully capture the phenomenon of pain. This essay is therefore a reflection on the concept of pain in medical practice. It combines results from a biomedical research project on pain and depression and interviews with Danish pain doctors, psychiatrists, depressed patients and healthy persons about their view of pain and sums up my experience and reflections as a pain researcher and pain doctor. The philosopher John Rogers Searle’s concept of consciousness is presented in relation to the concept of pain. Finally, a broad perspective on pain is presented based on both natural science and the humanities. Pain as an object of research and treatment thus challenges the biomedical methods and reminds us that »Medicine is the most human of sciences, the most empiric of art and the most scientific of humanities« Pellegrino's phrase, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1979.

Essay: Lægeløftet og den samaritanske pligt
Ole J. Hartling

Kvartalets genstand
Morten A. Skydsgaard

Essay: Lægeløftet og tillidens trange kår
Lotte Hvas

Et billede fra min hverdag
Andreas Rudkjøbing

Essay: Lægeløftet som happening
Lars Jørgensen

Originalartikel: Lægerne og abortspørgsmålet i 1930’erne
Lau Sander Esbensen

The medical establishment and the question of induced abortion in the 1930s

Bibl Læger 2015;207;229-253.

The 1930s was a defining period in the modern history of abortion in Denmark. The crucial question of whether or not to legalize some form of induced abortion in principal was settled in this decade, when in 1937 the Danish Parliament passed a law legalizing induced abortion under specific circumstances and the medical establishment was deeply involved in this process. Two prominent positions manifested among the physicians of that time: a ‘liberal’ position, advocating women’s access to legally induced abortion as a means to uphold their lives, and a more ‘traditional’ position, warning that such a development would be letting down the central issue for any physician: to uphold life. The liberal and the traditional positions argued over more than abortion, but what essentially divided them, was their different views on the value and nature of life: Is the value of human life an intrinsic or an extrinsic phenomenon? Is the value of life defined by the dignity of life or the quality of life?

Essay: Lægeløfte, kulturarv og en ny virkelighed
Uffe Juul Jensen & Mogens K. Skadborg

Interview: Abort, liv og lov: samtale med Lau Sander Esbensen
Redaktionen

Essay: Lægeløftet fra dekanens talerstol
Bent Sørensen