“We must not see any person as an abstraction.  Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” Elie Wiesel

For those who want to specialize in health law quickly, a good reference is NEJM 2012; 367: 445-50 which completes the task in five pages (& includes the quote from Elie Wiesel).

• Apparently physicians and lawyers did not get along much better in 1812 according to this article.  Thomas Percival’s original title for his influential 1803 Medical Ethics text was Medical Jurisprudence.  About half of this text is devoted to “professional duties…which require a knowledge of law.”
• Early medical malpractice case in 1767: Slater v Baker and Stapleton.  Slater sued after treatment for his broken leg had a poor result; the jury awarded £500 (equivalent to £60,000 in 2012).
• Coffee quack case in 1807. A “physician” claimed to cure all fevers with several concoctions, including drugs he called “coffee.”  When a patient died, it was felt that he had been poisoned by the “coffee.” The so-called physician was brought to trial but acquitted.  The judges instructions: “it is to be exceedingly lamented, that people are so easily persuaded to put confidence in these itinerant quacks.”  No adequate legal remedy if prescribed “with honest intentions and expectations of relieving his patients.”  This case led to the first physician-licensing law in 1818 (Massachusetts).

Landmark events:

• 1905 Jacobson v Massachusetts –no right to refuse smallpox vaccine
• 1946-47 Nuremberg trials –Nuremberg code set forth in judgement
• 1973 Roe v Wade –right to terminate pregnancy
• 1990 Cruzan v Director (Missouri Dept of Health) –right to refuse life-sustaining treatment
• 1997 Washington v Glucksberg and Vacco v Quill –no right to physician-assisted suicide
• 2012 Nat’l federation of independent business v Sebelius –upheld patient affordable care act