On medical cruelty

Country Doctor (1948), by W. Eugene Smith

Here I proposed cruelty as the worst moral badness.

Now, two quotations of the English edition of In The Land Of Pain by Alphonse Daudet, on medical cruelty:

Jean-Martin Charcot was notorious for his blunt speakint to patients and their families. (...) He once said to a patient: "You're in the position of a man sitting in shit with a sabre flashing above his head: either dive in or have your head cut off". If he was being tactful, he might announce bad news in Latin (note on p. 23 by editor Julian Barnes).

The way nurses talk: "That's a lovely wound... Now this wound is really wonderful". You'd think they were talking about flowers (p.27).