Læknar hafa frá öndverðu haft siðferðileg viðmið í starfi sínu. Elsta og þekktasta dæmið er eiðurinn sem kenndur er við gríska lækninn Hippókrates (460-370 f. Kr.). Segja má að hinn siðferðilegi kjarni eiðsins sé fólginn í þessu ákvæði: „Ég heiti því að beita læknisaðgerðum til líknar sjúkum, eftir því sem ég hef vit á og getu til, en aldrei í því skyni að valda miska eða tjóni.“1 Hér er velferð sjúklingsins í fyrirrúmi og enn er vísað til kröfunnar primum non nocere, umfram allt valdið ekki miska, sem meginsiðareglu læknislistarinnar. Samkvæmt nútímalegri greiningu á siðareglum eru slík ákvæði um að gæta hagsmuni sjúklinga hluti af frumskyldum lækna.2,3 Aðrir meginflokkar siðareglna eru félagslegar skyldur við almenning og samfélag, hæfniskyldur að viðhalda þekkingu og færni og skyldur gagnvart starfssystkinum (stundum nefndar bróðurlegar skyldur).

The conjunction between medical practice, religion and magic becomes rather visible when one peers into old scripts and ancient literature. Before the foundation and diffusion of universities of the continent, the european convents and cloisters were the centers of medical knowl­edge and -practice for centuries. Alongside the scholarly development of medical science, driven from the roots of the eldest scholarly medicial practice, the practice of folk-medicin flourished and thrived all over Europe, not least the herbal-medicine which is the original form and foundation for modern pharmacy. This article deals with the conjunction of religion, magic and medical practice in ancient Icelandic sources such as the Old-Norse literature, medical-scripts from the 12th – 15th century Iceland, and not least the Icelandic magical-scripts (galdrakver) of the 17th century. The last mentioned documents were used as evidence in several witch-trials that led convicted witches to suffer executions at the stake once the wave of European witch-persecutions had rushed ashore in 17th century Iceland. These sources indicate a decline of medical knowledge and science in the 16th and 17th century Iceland, the medical practice being rather undeveloped at the time – in Iceland as in other parts of Europe – there­fore a rather unclear margin between „the learned and the laymen“. While common people and folk-healers were convicted as witches to suffer at the stake for possession of magical scripts and healing-books, some scholars of the state of Danmark were practicing healing-methods that deserve to be compared to the activities of the former ones. That comparison raises an inevitable question of where to draw the line between the learned medical man and the magician of 17th century Iceland, that is between Magic and Science.