Abstract

The objectives of medicine, the art of healing suffering human beings, are shared by all of humanity. The internal logic of medicine does not depend on prejudice or on cultural premises; it is perforce universal. In his The Merchant of Venice (3:1) William Shakespeare wrote (1598):

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?