Introduction

Abstract

This is the first monographic study on the long history of palliative care. The story of the rise of the hospice movement and of modern palliative medicine since the 1960s has often been told. As this book shows, the frequently excruciating suffering that people went through during the last months and weeks of their lives made good palliative care all the more important. It traces the rise of the notion of “palliative” treatment from the late Middle Ages and studies the ways in which physicians dealt with moribund and dying patients, how they viewed and reacted to the ethical problems that arose in this situation and how patients and families experienced terminal medical care.