Praesans imperfectum — perfectum, plusquam perfectum futurum.—Grotius.
In tracing the historical development of medical ethics, two main paths of progression are to be noted: The first is concerned with regulations imposed on physicians by outside, and usually civil, authority; and the second with regulations imposed on physicians by physicians themselves. Covering generally the question of fees, and designed to protect at once the interests both of society and of the individual practitioner, the first line of development began with the medical provisions of the celebrated Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (about 2250 B. C.),1 and culminated with the lengthy fee statutes enacted by the various European municipal authorities 2 and the American colonial assemblies 3 during the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries. These embodied the principle of the lex talionis as late as the medical portions of the Forum Judicium of the Visigoths (about 650 A. D.),