A 1960s Course in Medical Ethics in a Canadian Medical School

From 1963 until 1969, Reginald (Reg) Perkin, a physician, presented a series of lectures on medical ethics to fourth-year medical students. His approach to both the teaching of medical ethics and his understanding of what constitutes medical ethics are revealed through an interview with him and the notes he used for his lectures. This paper provides an example of a medical ethics course taught prior to the 1970s development of the discipline of bioethics. It argues that there is significant alignment with later medical ethics curricula structured around questions posed by Martin McKneally and Peter Singer in 2001.