[Medical ethics in the 19th century literature]

Since the last century, humanity has been besieged by violence, crisis of the state of law and impunity, everything extended to crisis of medical ethics-moral.

In addition to clinic cases and ethics and moral dilemmas in the nineteenth century, to investigate for testimonies of the history of medicine and medical ethics, moral, etiquette and education in the nineteenth century literature, considering this a trustworthy archive of them. Analytic-historical proceeding: Cases of autonomy, beneficence, justice, nonmaleficence and solidarity in 122 nineteenth century literary masterpieces (84 authors, 20 countries), selected--according to prestigious scholars--because they show coincidence and transcendence of real life objects with literary represented objects, taking for this article just Axel Munthe's Story of San Michele. FINDS: Grouped in statistical-analytic tables literary paragraphs about technical-scientific matters, professional exercise, medical-patient relation, clinic cases, moral-ethics dilemmas and medical etiquette and education were identified corroborating that the more worthy medical dimension has humanistic roots.

Innovating contribution: focused through the lens of the medicine history and bioethics, literary masterpieces might be the reflexive-analytical way for the twenty-first century physician/reader, to recover the real objects represented, to choose his excelling path and to increase his ethos and contribution to the common welfare.