wigginsmum wrote:Why don't you just accept that you're attempting to justify a nonsensical argument, web? Doctors are not practising witchcraft by prescribing medicine - if you think they are, then you're really on the wrong track.
I'm bowing out of this thread now - have better things to do with my time than read stuff like this. Life's too short.
Jules
Doctors who prescribes an addictive pain killer and gets the patient hooked is practicing pharmakeia!
People who take the pain pills and are addicted and know it are practicing pharmakeia!
People who smoke cigarettes are practicing pharmakeia!
The cigarette compaines who sells them are practicing pharmakeia!
People who are addicted to alcohol are practicing pharmakeia!
Drug dealers on the corner are practicing pharmakeia!
The Witch Doctors of old who mixed mercury into the medicine thinking it would cure but ended up killing 25% of the people in the village was practicing pharmakeia!
Doctors who perform an abortion are practicing pharmakeia!
The well-known Oath of Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.) includes a promise not to perform an abortion:
I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. . . . I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.(15)
The Didache maintained that there is a "great difference between these two ways." In expounding the second great commandment ("Love your neighbor as yourself") the author makes a list of "thou shalt not" statements. The list prohibits murder, adultery, sodomy, fornication, theft, the use of drugs (pharmakeia), infanticide, and abortion (2.2). The unborn child was considered a neighbor, against whom such things could not be done. Followers of the second way, the way of death, included those who practiced "medicine" (pharmakeia) and those who were "killers of the child, who abort the mold (plasma) of God."
http://www.tesm.edu/pubs/writings/wrap36ac
Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine
http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI/1.2.1.2.htm
Practitioners were priests, and after 2000 BC, they were ruled by the strict laws included in the Code of Hammurabi listed below.
215 If a physician make a large incision with an operating knife and cure it, or if he open a tumor (over the eye) with an operating knife, and saves the eye, he shall receive ten shekels in money.
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216 If the patient be a freed man, he receives five shekels.
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217 If he be the slave of some one, his owner shall give the physician two shekels.
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218 If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off.
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219 If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a freed man, and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another slave.
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220 If he had opened a tumor with the operating knife, and put out his eye, he shall pay half his value.
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221 If a physician heal the broken bone or diseased soft part of a man, the patient shall pay the physician five shekels in money.
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222 If he were a freed man he shall pay three shekels.
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223 If he were a slave his owner shall pay the physician two shekels.
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224 If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation on an ass or an ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the surgeon one-sixth of a shekel as a fee.
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225 If he perform a serious operation on an ass or ox, and kill it, he shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value.
Example of pharmakeia!
Mercury is extremely toxic and its curative effect is unproven!
The usefulness of mercury is limited by its poisonous nature and scarcity.
Mercury was among the first metals known, and its compounds have been used throughout history. Archaeologists found mercury in an Egyptian tomb dating from 1500 BC. The Egyptians and the Chinese may have been using cinnabar as a red pigment for centuries before the birth of Christ. In many civilizations mercury was used to placate or chase away evil spirits. The alchemists thought that mercury, which they associated with the planet Mercury, had mystical properties and used it in their attempts to transmute base metals into gold. The Greeks knew of mercury and used it as a medicine. Mercury and mercury compounds were used from about the 15th century to the mid 20th century to cure syphilis. Because mercury is extremely toxic and its curative effect is unproven, other syphilis medicines are now used. The usefulness of mercury is limited by its poisonous nature and scarcity.
http://www.herbs2000.com/homeopathy/merc.htm
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/ ... nt__1.html