Medical Ethics in Some Classical Persian Literary Texts

Classical Persian literary texts include notable themes that can still be innovating and guidance for modern societies. Among these motifs, there are implied pieces of advice in medical ethics. In this study, the researcher has extracted codes of conduct for physicians by scrutinizing some of these literary texts including GhaboosNameh, KefayatAlteb, PandNamehAhvazi, ChaharMaghaleh, Khofi-e Alayi, Kelilehva Demneh, and some texts on the history of medicine.
The results of this study strongly supported the idea that medical ethics has been a major subject for the elite and men of science in the field of medicine or other noted fields of science. Moreover, this research indicated that from the dawn of Islamic civilization to the present time medical ethics has been a focal point. Great physicians such as Sayyed Ismaeil Jorjani, Ibn Hbish Teflisi, Ahvazi, and Movafagh AldinHeravialong with the prominent authors such as NezamiSamarghandi, OnsorAlmaali KeykavoosIbnEskandar, and Nasr Allah Moshi have offered a number of invaluable pieces of advice for physicians. Some of the most notable of such advice include trustworthiness, prudency, openness with patients, tenderness, sacrifice, honesty, confidentiality, benevolence, assisting less privileged patients financially, avoiding prescription of abortion drugs, avoiding hazardous medicine prescription, and generosity.
The general trend of highlighting these values has extended to the present. Educating the news physicians to gain such considerations and research on ethics have been on the forefront of the minds of the researchers in bio-sciences and medicine