Pessary
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A pessary is a prosthetic device inserted into the vagina for structural and pharmaceutical purposes. It is most commonly used to treat stress urinary incontinence to stop urinary leakage and to treat
Gold-plated stem pessary (interuterine device) from 1920
An assortment of pessaries
Pessary covered in phosphate after being left in the vagina for an extended time
Hippocratic Oath
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The Hippocratic Oath is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians. It is one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it requires a new physician to swear, by a
Pessary
…Ancient Greek word pessós, meaning round stone used for games. Pessaries are even mentioned in the oldest surviving copy of the Greek medical text, the Hippocratic Oath, as something that physicians should never administer for the purposes of an abortion: "Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion…
A fragment of the oath on the 3rd-century Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2547.
The Greek physician Hippocrates (460–370 BC), to whom the oath is traditionally attributed, though most modern scholars challenge that attribution.
A 12th-century Greek manuscript of the oath in the shape of a cross. The oath continued to be in use in the Byzantine Christian world, with its references to pagan deities replaced by a Christian preamble.
Hippocratic Oath in a surgical treatise by Franciscus Arcaeus (1493–1573?), English edition of 1588