The purpose of this MEDICAL STUDENTS NEWSLETTER is to encourage the medical student to become aware of the moral dimension in the practice of medicine. Hopefully it will also encourage the student to cultivate good ethical habits that will continue throughout his or her medical career.

By its nature medicine is perhaps the most important of human vocations. Human beings exist in material bodies that are invariably subject to disease and ultimately death. Medicine is the profession that diagnoses and treats mental and physical disease and hopefully returns the patient to wholeness.

Humans, because they can reason and choose, have an ethical dimension. Choices can be good or bad, right or wrong. In medicine, because the subject matter can be serious and even life threatening, the ethical implications of the physician's actions are correspondingly more serious.

For a variety of reasons the science and art of medical ethics are less emphasized than other disciplines such as anatomy and biochemistry. This newsletter, published quarterly, is an effort to correct this imbalance.

When it was evening they brought Him many and He cured all the sick. (Mt. 8:16)

A large number of people came to hear Him and He healed them of their diseases. (Lk. 6:17)

As many as He touched were healed. (Mt. 14:32)

He had cured many and those who had diseases were pressing upon Him to touch Him. (Mk. 3:10)

At that time He cured many of their diseases. (Lk. 7:21)

Great crowds followed Him, and He cured them there. (Mt. 19:2)

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages curing every disease and illness. (Mt. 9:35)

Great crowds came to Him having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others, and He cured them. (Mt. 15:30)

The blind and lame approached Him in the temple area and He cured them. (Mt. 21:14)

Make the physician your friend, for he is essential to you. It was God who called him to his profession, and from God comes the doctor's wisdom. (Sir 38:1-2)