Concerns about patients being harmed during treatment have been echoed since centuries in the aphorism “Primum Non Nocere” or 'First do no harm'. Over the years there has been a dramatic change in the regulation of physician practices. While physicians were largely self-regulated and governed by the ethical codes defined by their respective Guilds, there are also examples of State-imposed legal penalties for incompetence.
For example, the legal code of Hammurabi, which was inscribed around 2000 BC in Babylon, describes penalties for medical malpractice, ranging from financial compensation to more draconian measures such as amputating a surgeon's hand. The role of regulation In ancient India, Sushruta, the surgeon-teacher code of ethical and clinical conduct made medical students take an oath (not unlike the Hippocratic Oath), when they graduated from the School of Surgery. While…
