Essays In Pastoral Medicine by Austin O’Malley and James J. Walsh

The material of pastoral medicine requires constantly renewed discussion, because medicine in general is progressive enough frequently to devise better methods of diagnosis and treatment, and thus the postulates of the moral questions involved are changed. This discussion, however, is not easily made. The facts upon which the ethical part of pastoral medicine rests are furnished by the physician for the consideration and judgment of the moralist—the physician educated after modern methods knows little or nothing of ethics and can not himself make accurate moral decisions. The moralist, on the other hand, is commonly a poor counsellor to the physician, because long training in medicine is needed before the physical data of the moral decisions is comprehended. The physician, therefore, is at a loss to determine what he may or may not do in {vi} cases that involve the greatest moral responsibility, and the priest is a hesitating guide because the moral theologies do not convincingly present the doctrine in these cases.
—From this book