Herbert Ratner, M.D.
Its lead article is the perceptive interview on Medicine with Donald McDonald from the American Character Series, in which medicine is defined as the art of doing for nature what nature would like to do for herself if she could. First published in 1962 it was quoted extensively in the media, sold out within months, and is still applicable today. The spoken word is Herbert Ratner’s forte, not only in interviews, but as teacher, lecturer, and leader of lively discussions. And his writing captures the best of his speaking. In this book we have:
• Hippocrates and his Oath validated anew for modern times,
• Luke the Physician,
• Plato on informed consent,
• numerous insights from Aristotle,
• an analysis of what constitutes normal,
• a call for family physicians,
• a medical critique of oral contraceptives,
• innovative approaches to both AIDS and semen, and
• a blow by blow account of the early Salk vaccine program which inadvertently introduced SV40 into the human population.
One might say Herbert Ratner’s favorite book is the Book of Nature, which he reads so well in defense of the traditional family, natural childbirth, and breast-feeding. And from Nature he gives us a renewed appreciation of human sexuality.
Herbert Ratner, M.D.
1907–1997
Born to liberal Russian-Jewish parents on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he graduated from the University of Michigan School of Medicine in 1935, then spent several years with Robert M. Hutchins at the University of Chicago. As were many young intellectuals of his day Herbert Ratner was attracted to the Catholic faith, and was baptized in 1938. His wife Dorothy was a medical school classmate with whom he raised three daughters. Dr. Ratner lived a long and full life:
• 1941–1949 private practice of medicine in Chicago,
• 1943–1979 associate clinical professor at Stritch Loyola,
• 1949–1974 director of public health, Oak Park, Illinois,
• 1967–1997 editor of Child & Family, a reprint quarterly.
The Physician’s Obligation
The primary obligation of the professional man, whether it be in the ministry, medicine or law, is to the individual, not society at the expense of the individual. That just as it is monstrous as an accommodation to society for the priest to promote sin and vice among his penitents, and the lawyer to promote perjury and injustice among his clients, it is equally monstrous for the physician to promote disease (as in the contraceptive pill) and death (as in abortion and euthanasia) among his patients.
This is why at medicine’s birth as a learned profession which serves the basic need of individual man for health and life, the Hippocratic Oath took an unalterable stand against killing when it proscribed both abortion and euthanasia. And if there were ever a time when euthanasia would have been appropriate it would have been in the fifth century BC when the science and art of pain relief was in such a primitive state. But, as if inspired, Hippocrates saw clearly that it was dedication to life not death that gave medicine its essential character and ethic. He also probably realized that physicians kill off enough patients unintentionally without asking them to do it intentionally.
Technology, if not properly harnessed and directed, can corrode and dehumanize. In medicine, this particularly occurs when technology is taken over by physician-social engineers who have redirected their allegiance from the good of the individual patient to the alleged greater good of society and the state.
Fidelity
All mammals are automatically faithful to their young by determinative instincts. Human mothers, on the other hand, have free will and can accept or reject motherhood in whole or in part. Since mammalian newborns are dependent upon mothers for nourishment and nurture, nature implants in the mammalian mother the basic motherly characteristic of fidelity. This faithfulness carries over to her spouse, to her church, to all of her activities. She is even faithful to such organizations like the March of Dimes, who exploit this trait by making her feel needed.
The most damaging consequence of the increasing trend toward working mothers who leave the home to work during the baby’s formative years is the relinquishment of the child to a day care center where the child is raised as if it were part of a litter of offspring. If nature intended young children to be raised in litters, they would have come in litters. This is another example of how we must read nature for the guidelines of family life.
Major authorities now universally agree as a result of studies of the past fifteen years that, for the optimum personal maturation of the child, the child needs the full-time attention of the mother or a full-time mother substitute during the first three years of life. Young women must appreciate that their life span in developed countries is now over seventy-five years. Not everything in life has to be accomplished in the early years of marriage. There is enough time for career fulfillment after children are off to school. And dedication to children in their dependent years accelerates their independence and, in turn, liberates parents for additional activities.
