Chapter — Konings, Theologia Moralis
CHAPTER VII: ON THE OBLIGATIONS OF PHYSICIANS, SURGEONS, AND PHARMACISTS
- They are held before all things under grave obligation, 1° to have sufficient knowledge and skill; 2° to apply diligence proportioned to the gravity of the matter which is committed to their care. But if they are deficient in these, they are held concerning all damages which follow thence.
Moreover they must furnish their work gratuitously to the poor who are in necessity, as was said above n. 1062. q. 3° R. 2° concerning advocates.
But in curing the sick the following rules must be observed:
I. They are held to follow safe and secure opinions of physicians, at least ordinarily; because the peril of the sick person cannot be removed by the probability of the matter.
II. When it is certain that some medicine will be useful to the sick, they are held to apply it, the doubtful one omitted; but if something certain is lacking, they more probably must prefer the doubtful.
III. What is licit when no hope appears concerning the health of the sick person, and no remedy is present except a doubtful one, see n. 60. II. 2°.
Hence a physician sins gravely, 1° If without sufficient capacity he undertakes to cure a grave disease. 2° If, when a grave and unusual disease occurs, he does not expend special work. 3° If he applies untried medicines for the sake of trying them. 4° If, with the nature of the disease not well known, he rashly prescribes dangerous remedies, especially with risk of life or grave lesion. 5° If, when the danger of the sick person has been recognized, he is not present opportunely, visiting him day and night if need be, and does not apply all means apt for driving away the disease. 6° If he does not permit other physicians to be called when it would be necessary, or if, summoning others for the sake of consultation, he attends to friendship rather than to skill. 7° If, on the contrary, without necessity he calls other physicians with useless expenses for the sick person, or if against his own conscience he adheres to their counsels. 8° If he draws out the cure for the sake of profit, uselessly multiplies visits where a salary is exacted for each, or if he exacts too great a price. 9° If, to favor friendly pharmacists, he prescribes superfluous medicines. 10° If he advises abortion, or the means of procuring it, or himself executes it. 11° If easily and without necessity he absolves from fasting or from Mass. 12° If he treats the poor, whose care he undertook from a stipend, less diligently than the rich, or, although not obliged from a stipend, does not assist those placed in grave danger and not having another. 13° If he does not preserve secrets committed to his faith and in order to his art, e.g. by revealing shameful diseases without a proportionate cause. 14° Finally the physician sins gravely, indeed most gravely, if, besides in the case in which he would certainly judge the warning not to be useful, he does not forewarn concerning the grave danger of the sick person, so that the Sacraments may be conferred on him.1 See also other things concerning the physician above in their own places.
- Pharmacists, if you except a few things, sin almost as physicians in the cases just set forth, but especially by applying old medicines, selling useless ones, supplying means to pregnant girls for casting out the fetus, not faithfully executing the mandates of the physician, for example by supplying one medicine for another, etc.
- Questions. - Query 1° To what is the physician specially held as to the soul of the sick person whose care he has undertaken?
Resp. He is held of himself under grave obligation to warn him concerning the grave danger in which he is placed, and, if it is a question of a Catholic sick person, also concerning the necessity of receiving the Sacraments, lest he depart without absolution, Viaticum, and Extreme Unction. This is clear 1° from natural law, or from the precept of charity. 2° From the very well-known Decretal of Innocent III, confirmed and renewed by other subsequent Supreme Pontiffs.2 - Yet it is not always necessary that the physician by himself warn the sick person concerning the proximate danger of death. Sometimes it suffices that he take care that he be warned by relatives or friends, so that he benevolently admit the Priest, and be induced to receive the Sacraments. If the sick man has a known confessor, it will suffice if this one is warned concerning the state of his penitent; for then by visiting him he will be able more efficaciously to move him to provide for the salvation of his soul. But let the physician beware lest he suffer the warning to be deferred longer. For he ought not to draw it out until the danger of death is certain; but he is held to this office when he adverts that danger is gravely imminent. If physicians observed this custom, the sick would not so greatly fear the warning, nor at the mention of Confession be seized with terror.
Query 2° Whether a physician sins gravely who in time of pestilence abandons the sick, lest he contract the plague?
Resp. Affirmatively, if it is a question of a physician for whom a stipend has been established by the community, and of those sick persons in whose favor it was constituted. Otherwise negatively, since charity does not oblige with equal danger to oneself.