This introduction to the special issue on “Medicine, Health, and Publics” argues that a rhetorical understanding of publics offers conceptual, methodological, and practical benefits to health and medical humanities scholars.

As an example of Aristotle's genre of epideictic, or ceremonial rhetoric, the Hippocratic Oath has the capacity to persuade its self-addressing audience to appreciate the value of the medical profession by lending an element of stability to the shifting ethos of health care. However, the values it celebrates do not accurately capture communally shared norms about contemporary medical practice. Its multiple and sometimes conflicting versions, anachronistic references, and injunctions that resist translation into specific conduct diminish its longer-term persuasive force. Only (...) when expunged of these elements and reconstructed using values over which there is widespread agreement can the Oath succeed in moving its audience from core values located in past discussions to principled action in the future. (shrink)