Hippocratic Medicine :: essays research papers fc

Introduction Hippocratic medicine remains one of Ancient Greece's lasting contributions to the field of science. Lacking the equipment physicians today take for granted when diagnosing and healing their patients, Hippocratic physicians were forced to create a novel system for explaining and curing disease based upon the prevalent scientific theories of their era. This system became known as the humoral theory of disease. Humoral theory incorporated the theories of Presocratic philosophers in order to explain disease and offer help for a cure. Two themes characterizing Presocratic philosophical thought dramatically influenced humoral theory. The humoral theory approach of Hippocratic medicine was based upon Presocratic philosophical musings about the relationship of man to the world. By the time humoral theory was vogue, philosophers had concluded that both man and the world were governed by the same natural laws. Humoral theory also was based upon Presocratic theories about change and how it occu rred in the world; humoral theory depended upon the assertion that contrasting elements constantly contradicted each other, leading to continuous change on one level and stability on another. These two Presocratic theories shaped humoral theory and allowed the physician to develop a rational and empirically based approach to medicine. Hippocrates - Separating the Man from the Myth Before we can trace the development of these theories by the Presocratics we must first consider Hippocratic medicine and humoral theory. Most of what is known about the historical figure Hippocrates, the supposed founder of the Hippocratic medical approach, must be evaluated with caution. Hippocrates lived c. 460-370 BC, but further reliable information about his life is difficult to obtain.(1) Two passages from Plato are seen as legitimate sources of information about Hippocrates' life. Plato lived from 427-348 BC, making him a contemporary of Hippocrates. A passage from Plato's work Protagoras suggests that Hippocrates was a physician, associated with the island of Cos, who taught medicine to students for a fee. Another passage from a work of Plato, the Phaedras, alludes to a "method" by which Hippocrates gained an understanding of medicine. These sources provide some means by which to evaluate the impact of Hippocrates upon ancient medical practice. The Corpus Hippocraticum Many other texts attributed to Hippocrates shed light upon the Hippocratic method of medicine. None of these texts may be identified as Hippocrates' own work, however. These works are called the Corpus Hippocraticum and number upwards of sixty.(2) Scholars have suggested that the texts may have been part of a library collection, originally from Cos, that was subsequently moved to Alexandria and then added upon, building the collection of medical texts we have today.

Examine the Key Ideas Associated with Law and Punishment

Examine the key ideas associated with law and punishment Law and Punishment go hand in hand. There are Laws, which are the system of rules which a particular country or community recognises as regulating the actions of followers, and there are punishments, for when a member of said country/community breaks the rules. Punishment is defined as the infliction of a penalty or to cause pain for an offence.Most of the time it is not a choice as to whether you are part of a law-following community because almost all countries in the world have some kind of law-system and often the minute you turn the age where you are legally responsible or step off the boat, plane or train you are subjected to their laws. The Biblical views on punishment have often been based on the old testament teaching ‘an eye for an eye’. The bible also lays out punishments for certain crimes that appear to follow this teaching. Except that there are many punishments in the bible that seem to be out of pro portion to the crime e. . â€Å"whoever curses his father or his mother will be put to death†. There are many problems with this statement for example it does not state how old the son/daughter has to be to deserve this punishment, it seems to imply even a 4 year old who does not necessarily know what they are saying can be put to death for cursing their parents. An eye for an eye is also relevant in today’s laws, it is the basis of retributive justice that is present in our society. Retributive justice is the idea that those who have done the crime should somehow pay back for what they did.Rachel’s said â€Å"People deserve to be treated in the same way that they have (voluntarily treated others)† This seems like a fair way of treating someone because why someone should be allowed to do one thing and then not expect to be treated in the same way? But some punishments that are retributive e. g. capital punishment do not seem to benefit society and there i s a risk of the punishment becoming revengeful not retributive. Retributive justice also causes a problem because it might make capital punishment a legitimate approach to punishment.I. e. If a person murders it is right for them to be killed. And It also can lead the legal system to instead of appearing like someone is being made to pay back what they have done wrong to looking like the legal system is being hypocritical i. e. we are showing society that it is wrong to be violent by being violent to wrong doers. This is not how we should be teaching people to not be violent. The punishment also must not be disproportionate to the crime e. g. sentencing a small child to death for stealing a sweet from a shop.Some forms of punishment e. g. fines may be disproportionate because to people with money a fine does not make any difference but to someone who has just enough money or just below the money they need for necessities it can be a massive problem, but on average I think retributiv e measures helps to make the punishment be proportionate to the crime because the person can be treated the way they treated others. Deterrence is another form of punishment. It means that we should punish for crimes in order to deter others from committing the same crime i. e. f we know what the punishment for an act is we are less inclined to do it. However there are problems with this because it assumes that the perpetrator had intent and full knowledge of what they were doing was wrong but often violent crimes happen in the heat of the moment and are not planned and those violent crimes that are calculated are often done by those people who are mentally ill. Also, why should be punish someone for the sake of someone else? Reformative justice is becoming more popular in today’s society and is the attempt to turn the criminal into a normal law abiding citizen.It is often based on the idea that everyone has an intrinsic value simply because they are human and the improvement of humans is good. According to deontology this is good because rehabilitation prevents people treating others as means. There is also a utilitarian argument for this because reformative justice improves the general quality of life in society. I also would argue that reformative justice is also trying to right the inequality between the rich and poor. People from less well of backgrounds are more likely to commit crimes due to them having fewer opportunities and less education.Poorer people are also more likely to come from violent backgrounds and therefore are more likely to be violent themselves. Therefore reformative justice helps make up for this lack of opportunities by offering classes inside prisons for example. Although there are many good things about reformative punishments, there are also many problems. Reformation takes away the responsibility for our actions and it does not attempt to right the wrong. This causes problems in itself because if there is no ‘punishm ent’ other than reformation then there is no incentive for people not to commit crime, in fact there is almost an incentive to commit a crime!And why someone in prison should be getting opportunities that people outside the prison do not get. I would like to think that there is good in everyone but it would simply be impractical to think that we can rehabilitate everyone as some people are simply too far gone and do not want to change. Hobbes philosophised about why we want/need laws in society and he came up with an idea called the social contract theory. This idea was based on his notion that government is an agreement between a group of people where they agree not to hurt each other.This is fuelled by the motivation of self-interest which according to Hobbes is pertinent because human beings are selfish creatures and therefore seek collective protection. i. e. If I promise not to hurt you and you promise not to hurt me then neither of us gets hurt and we’re both hap py. And this is what Hobbes believes to be the basis of our desire to keep the laws set out by the state – we should avoid chaos because it is not in our best interests therefore we should keep the laws. Kant had a similar conclusion i. e. that we should keep the laws but for a different reason.Kant said that we should ‘act so that you treat humanity, both in your own person and in that of another, always as an end’ i. e. we should keep the laws so that we do not treat others as means to an end. His idea of kingdom of ends states ‘act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends’ where the kingdom of ends is a perfect community where all members respect each other as ends in themselves. This is what we should strive to achieve, and to be successful at this we should keep the laws of the community.Therefore we should keep the laws and to keep the laws means that we must punish those that break t he law.. Evaluate the view that objectivity and relativism pose problems for the concept of law and punishment. Objectivity states that there are ethical principles that are always wrong or always right and they are normally established a priori i. e. without experience. Therefore as there are certain things that are always wrong we need a law to stop people from doing it. This law may be objectively right and its punishment for breaking the law may also be objectively right.Objectivity might support retributive justice; Retributive justice is when someone pays back for their crime. This could support objectivity because it needs to be imposed with the consistency that objectivity provides therefore you could argue that Retributive justice only works with the objectivity and as retributive justice tends to be favoured in western societies perhaps objectivity does not pose such a problem with law and punishment. Having said this there are still the problems it does cause.Objective et hical principles are established a priori therefore we cannot know them through experience. If we do not know them through experience, how can we truly know if something is right or wrong and therefore how do we know if a law is right whilst using objectivity. Objectivity also does not allow for individual cases, it runs the risk of using a ‘one size fits all’ policy towards law and punishment and whilst we do need some consistency amongst crimes, one size does not exactly fit all because not every crime is exactly the same!Normative relativism states that truth and morality is relative to the country/society that one is in and therefore we cannot criticize other cultures as to how they do things. With regards to law and punishment this leads us to the face that there are no definite truths or morals that can be applied in every situation around the world so Punishment is determined according to the country and, if we take it relativism further, according to the circums tances of the case.Hobbes took a relativist view because he said that justice cannot be fixed, and each country/community has different ideas of what law and punishment should be all we should do is aim not be in chaos, not because it is wrong in an objective sense but because it does not serve or self-interest. Relativism may be a good thing because it allows each country to organise punishment as they see fit and there is merit in the systems that other countries have for example some people believe that Iraq was justified in the hanging of Saddam Hussein even though in our society the death penalty is not used.However it does have problems because it means that all forms of punishment are right as long as it is accepted by society e. g. it would be right to hang a small child for stealing sweets if society thought it was the correct punishment. If punishment is decided relative to the circumstance and there is no consistency we could end up with a justice system where only some p eople would be punished and this could easily lead to corruption, sexism and racism within the punishment system.It also means that there may be little point of having punishment because if only some cases lead to punishment then punishment would be pointless! It would serve no deterrent or retributive purpose. Objectivity and Relativism both have merits and cause problems for law and punishment and I do not think either can work solely on their own because they have too many problems by themselves, but on the other hand I do not know if it is possible for Objectivity and Relativism to work together.Perhaps if the laws are objective but how we punish people is relative to each country, case and persons involved. For example although killing may be objectively wrong it may not be appropriate to treat a child who killed someone, an adult who killed someone by accident and an adult who killed someone out of hate all In the same way although they have all broken the same objective rule.

Final Reflection and Personal Development Planning Essay

Final Reflection and Personal Development Planning Essay Introduction A personal development plan is an essential tool for the development of a student, the development plan helps a student plan on the basic strategies to use to evaluate and enhance his capabilities. Evaluation of personal capability entails reviewing personal traits like the strengths and weaknesses in various areas of learning. The students should make sure that these areas are well understood after which the individual should provide an action plan complete with a deadline and an effectiveness measure. The deadline assist the student to achieve their goals by a given date at which the student will evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy employed. If the strategies employed are not effective, the students need to formulate other strategies that favor his development. The personal development plan is reviewed at several stages of the individual development. The individual may enlist the help from friends to gauge his performance levels or perform some tests to check on his developm ent. Initial personal development plan The initial personal development plan was aimed at resolving some of the problems encountered in the previous academic levels. In the previous levels personal development was not planed thus some of the areas suffered causing a decrease in the knowledge levels. Over the years personal development was random and skills acquired were easily forgotten due to lack of adequate practice and use of these knowledge in the practical world. The personal development plan was designed to tackle the areas where weakness was seen in the learning process and ensure the areas of strength were maintained at high levels. The initial development plan was aimed at improving personal presentation skills, confidence was lacking in the presentation skills thus the presentations were not convincing to the audience, the presentation took longer times than required, this was due to lack of understanding the topic thus the ability to summarize work was compromised. Confidence is also caused by fear of other st udents, being new to the school may have caused this as most of students were new. To increase the confidence levels, interaction with the students through social groups was encouraged. The presentation skills were allocated a period of one semester which key aspects of presentation were to be practiced. Reading skills were lacking prior to the personal development plan, connecting the information read was a problem. The need to understand information from various sources arose. If information is understood reading is made easy. The understanding of words was also lacking. Failure to understand the words and familiarizing with them causes this problem. The brain requires an adequate word bank to ensure that the person can read effectively. To resolve this problem reading from various sources is recommended to ensure that the student understand more words. Increasing the amount of words assist the individual to gain confidence in personal skills thus learn is made easy. Listening to discussions and debates plays an important part in increasing the knowledge of an individual; this assists the students to improve on the ideas by building on the ideas already in the learner and getting ideas from other sources. The student may follow up the discussions or the debates by personal learning thus improve on the reading skills. Reading skills are acquired over a period of time so they were allocated a series of development levels marked by the grade. The levels in the previous academic level improved with the increase in learning materials. In the reading process, Time management is crucial for the student. Planning is needed by the student to ensure that the all aspects of learning are integrated and well managed to fit the student’s time frame. The student should allocate all daily activities adequate time to ensure that they are catered for. The important activities like reading and group work discussions should be allocated more time. The areas of weakness in the student should be allocated more time and resources to ensure that they improve. Time allocation in the previous levels was improving with the student finding adequate time to perform other tasks. Time management ensures that all the time available to the student is well managed and utilized. Time management helps address those areas of weakness. Time management was given a time frame of two months where by time tables were drawn for the activities performed and strict deadlines were expected to be met. Time management was improving as less time was wasted in the previous levels. Its projected that with the progress made the levels of time wasted will reduce enabling the student to utilize this resource efficiently. Group skill are important to the students learning skills, group work brings students with different abilities and different understanding together. These group traits allow the members of the group to develop each other with the weaker students benefiting from the able students. The communication skills are enhanced in these groups as those students that do not understand in class have the chance to consult their fellow classmates. The type of students determines the merits of the group, students contributing more to the group are better learners than those that receive the knowledge. In the previous levels this was noted and efforts to contribute more to the group were initiated. More contribution has resulted to more understanding of topics and the overall class performance has increased. The group skills were allocated two months to ensure their improvement. Social skills are needed in the learning process, to socialize with the right people in the school and after school play an important pant in enhancing confidence of the individual. Students with more friends due to their social skills tend to be more confident that those with few friends. Social skills assist the learner to gain the confidence which plays an important in understanding and associating with other students. Social skills were lacking before the personal development plan but after its initiation more friends have been acquired. The kind of friends acquired also determines the character of the student. Friends that are useful to the student will facilitate academic growth. Last semester’s academic growth Presentation skills have improved greatly due to the measures put in place to ensure that presentation skills are increased. The increase in the knowledge on topics presented assisted in the presentation process. Compared to the previous semesters, presentation confidence has greatly improved and this is evident from the grading of the presentation. There is a need for improvement and through constant growth presentation skills will be enhanced. Reading skills have improved due to quantity reading familiarizing with new words from different sources. The different use of the words has ensured that the student understands the words better and understand their application. The reading skills have increased due to these factors and with more effort this skills will be enhanced. Group skills have increased though need to improve is also encouraged. Ability to contribute to topics under discussion is facilitated by the increase in knowledge. Mastering the topics and explaining the concepts to the other group members has enabled the student to increase his knowledge and communication skills. The student has also been able to socialize with the right people thus enabling him to grow in social skills. Growth in social skills has enabled the student to acquire more friends thus confidence levels have increased. The number of friends has increased over time and this can be measured from the social networks in the school and popularity in the school. Time management has enabled the student to reduce the time wasted thus the day is spent doing activities that increase personal development. Time is an important resource to the student thus allocation of time to useful activities enables the student to grow and dedicate time to more important matters. Idle time is apportioned to reading rather than activity that would affect the growth of the student. Future personal development plan In the next four semesters, the plan will be to improve on the current development plan focusing more on the areas of weakness. Presentation skills have improved greatly thus time dedication and more practice will be needed to maintain this levels. Three weeks of every semester will be dedicated to sharpening presentation skills. Reading skills require adequate material and time resource. Reading from books and two weeks of each semester will be dedicated to reading. The student will also read articles to be up to date with the current affairs. Group work has improved greatly but concerns over time wasting require the student to cut back on the hours spent discussing with other students. The time requirement is three days a week from the initial six days a week. Time management is being done in an appropriate manner and the student is finding better use of the free time he has. Time management in the semesters to come should be maintained at the same levels to enable the student to m aintain current development rates. Socialization skills are needed to boast student’s confidence; the student’s confidence levels are relatively high so the less time should be spent on socializing. The time requirement for socializing should be limited to breaks and discussing groups to minimize the time loss.