The medical ethics of Erasmus and the physician-patient relationship

Erasmus and Humanism

One of the most influential figures of the European Renaissance (ca 1300-ca 1600) was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Although an ordained priest he was excused from ecclesiastical duties, partly because of chronic poor health. ¹ This dispensation gave him the freedom to travel extensively and to meet the leading scholars of his age-an experience which reinforced his commitment to the ideal of a pan-European society with Latin as the universal medium of learned communication.

As an exponent of Humanism, the dominant intellectual movement of his time, ² Erasmus considered that the primary aim of scholarship was to recover the culture of classical antiquity and make it relevant for one's own society. He wrote voluminously on a wide range of subjects including theology, literature, philology, education, history, morality and politics. ³ These publications brought him renown throughout Europe for his eloquence and moral vision, and he was sought after by "emperors, kings and popes, all of them wanting his services as minister, bishop or cardinal". ⁴

Medicine in the works of Erasmus

One of the many topics addressed in Erasmus's writings is the art of medicine-sometimes approached satirically and sometimes seriously, but always with an underlying moral purpose. In The Education of a Christian Prince (1516) he pursued the classical analogy between medicine and statecraft, the one ministering to the individual body and the other to the body politic. ⁵ In other writings he developed the Christian analogy between theology and medicine, believing that "What the priest is to our souls, the physician is to our bodies". ⁶

In the work for which he is best known today, The Praise of Folly (1511), Erasmus mocked hypocrisy and incompetence in all walks of life, including medicine. ⁷ His negative comments on physicians and medicine in this book, together with similar jibes in other works, such as his Colloquies (1518 and later editions), ⁸ have created the impression that he had a low opinion of physicians in general. ⁹ The fact that he was a semi-invalid for most of his adult life ¹⁰ may have given him some cause for dissatisfaction with medicine and its practitioners. But he nevertheless maintained good relations with a number of eminent physicians and clearly held some of...