EN
A historical review of legal regulations and ethical deliberations on environmental health and medicine from the Middle Ages to modernity that is presented in a broad philosophico- theological context. The authors adduce facts about medicine and its influence on society from its sacred grounding in the past until secularism and the inception of laboratory and hospital medicine. Furthermore, they describe the various meanings of medical police, functioning initially as guards of environmental health, hygiene and the multiplication of all subject’s powers. The authors also focus on the moral duties of doctors across the ages.