The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation

The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation is an essay by Austin O'Malley. It involves the early 20th century ethics and moral concerns surrounding medical amputation and abortions of fetuses. Excerpt: "How is this human body in all its complexity developed from the microscopic germ-cells? There has been a vast deal of ink spilled in striving to solve this mystery, but we come out empty by the same door wherein we went. The early Preformationists guessed that the ovum contains an embryo fully formed in miniature, and development is a mere unfolding of what had already existed. The biologists of to-day mention the Preformationists with superior scorn, and then present Preformationism under other names."