A historic tour, and the Hippocratic Oath

A historic tour, and the Hippocratic Oath

New class of medical students enjoy unique welcome to Queen’s University

By Anne Craig

August 30, 2016

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Incoming medical students start their campus tour at the Old Medical Building.

Twenty years ago, a group of medical students created a new tradition for incoming medical students – a historical walking tour of Queen’s campus and a recitation of the Hippocratic Oath on the shore of Lake Ontario.

The unique event, led by Queen’s professor Jacalyn Duffin (History of Medicine) took place again last night and featured stops at Summerhill/Benedickson House, the Old Medical Building, Richardson Laboratory, the Ann Baillie Building, and Fenwick Operating Theatre.

“I remember the first time I participated,” says Dr. Duffin. “I took a deep breath and called, ‘Meds 2000, repeat after me… I swear by Apollo.’ And to my amazement 75 voices responded in hearty unison, ‘I swear by Apollo.’ Chills ran up and down my spine. Meds ’00 had been given the solemnity that Meds ’99 had missed, and whether or not they would retain any of the history, they were existentially aware that they were entering an ancient profession on a historic campus.”

The Oath Explained
The Hippocratic Oath is a short set of promises, just one of the many treatises ascribed to the ancient Greek physician from the fifth century BC. It now exists in many different forms, heavily modified through time, and it is no longer recited at the medical graduation.
However the Oath contains interesting ideas — some long passé, some of timeless value.

On Monday night, for the 20th time, 100 new medical students were welcomed to Queen’s with this unique tradition.

Dr. Duffin says, for the first event in 1996, organizing students identified five historic spots: the front steps of Kingston General Hospital, founded in 1832 and the oldest continuously operating public hospital in English Canada; the curved stone back of an 1895 operating theatre for teaching in the round; the doors of the Museum of Health Care originally built as a nurses’ residence in 1904; and the tiny park known as the Medical Quadrangle where medicine was taught from 1854 to 1979.”

At each spot, a second-year medical student waited, garbed in black, armed with a bamboo torch, and primed with a historical tale – either about that place – or about the medical history of our community: cholera epidemics, mass graves, body snatching, admission of women students, exclusion of black students, and scientific achievements.

The final stop was Murney Tower, where Dr. Duffin led the first-year medical students in a recitation of the Hippocratic Oath. That tradition was followed again Monday night.

Health Sciences