Note 57 — Chapter VI · THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Hammurabi's code showed a disregard of intent which would make surgery a dangerous profession: "If a physician operate on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and cause the man's death; or open an abscess [in the eye] of a man with a bronze lancet and destroy the man's eye, they shall cut off his fingers." Early German and English law is just as naïve. If a weapon was left to be repaired at a smith's and was then caught up or stolen and used to do harm, the original owner was held responsible.