With reference to Wesley Smith’s article today up on NRO, it’s worth noting that simply saying that the Hippocratic oath has been pledged by doctors for 2,500 years gives a somewhat misleading impression. Strictly speaking, it’s true, but it’s important to remember that Hippocrates (or whoever wrote that oath) was very much in the minority in his own day, and, despite the fact that (principally due to the influence of Christian teaching) euthanasia has generally been prohibited in the West for a long time now, his oath remained a minority pledge up to modern times. According to this article in Science Week:

“the first recorded administration of the Hippocratic Oath in a medical school setting was at the University of Wittenberg in Germany in 1508 and that it did not become a standard part of a formal medical school graduation ceremony until 1804, when it was incorporated into the commencement exercises at Montpellier, France. The custom spread in fits and starts on both sides of the Atlantic during the 19th century, but even well into the 20th century relatively few American physicians formally took the oath. According to a survey conducted for the Association of American Medical Colleges in 1928, for example, only 19 percent of the medical schools in North America included the oath in their commencement exercises…”