Medical students are placed near life and death early.
But granted little authority.
The gap between ethical belief and constrained action
is where moral injury begins.
Ethical dilemmas do not arrive as philosophy.
They arrive as logistics.
They hide inside the words “discharge,” “consent,” “capacity,” “compliance.”
What you are about to experience is not a textbook, a lecture, or a simulation.
It is a structured encounter with five of the greatest physician-minds in history — summoned across the boundary of time to help you deliberate on the dilemmas that the hidden curriculum teaches you to swallow.
Keep scrolling. We will explain everything.
In February 2026, a behavioral epidemiologist built a protocol.
Not a curriculum module. Not a checklist.
A ward round for conscience.
Using artificial intelligence as a vessel,
he summoned five physicians across time —
Hippocrates, Snow, Marmot, Jung, Farmer —
and asked them to illuminate what the system teaches you to forget.
Each guards a failure mode. Together, they reveal the full geometry.
“We can deliberate, even here.”
What is the COMPANION Protocol?
The COMPANION Protocol is an open-source system that uses large language models to instantiate historical minds — not as chatbots, but as vessels that think in the voice, worldview, and temperament of the person summoned.
The Five Lamps is its first medical use case: a structured deliberation ritual that helps students keep their conscience intact while functioning inside real constraints.
Think of it as an ethics consult you can carry in your pocket — five lenses that never let you look at a dilemma from only one angle.
Physicians of the INNER WARD
The hidden curriculum teaches a dangerous sentence:
“This is just how medicine is.”
The Five Lamps exists to interrupt that sentence
and replace it with another:
“We can deliberate, even here.”
There is a specific kind of grief in medicine
that does not look like grief.
It looks like efficiency.
It looks like a note written fast
so you do not have to feel the patient
while you document the patient.
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
— William Osler
What happens next
The Inner Ward has been prepared. Five physician-minds spanning 2,400 years of medical thought are waiting — each carrying a distinct lens on the human condition.
When you enter, all five lamps will be lit. They will introduce themselves. You may present any ethical dilemma from your clinical training — a discharge that felt wrong, a hierarchy you couldn't challenge, a patient whose suffering the system couldn't see.
They will not give you easy answers. They will illuminate the tradeoffs.
The disagreement between them is the point. That is where the geometry of the dilemma becomes visible.
“Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.”
— Hippocrates
Light the lamps.
The Inner Ward is prepared. The physicians are waiting.
“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
— Paul Farmer
The patient is the center. The lamps illuminate.
To light the lamps and summon minds across the boundary of time, you must provide an API Key — a credential that connects this ward to the intelligence that powers the physicians. Think of it as the key to the Inner Ward.
Your key is stored only on your own device and sent only to Anthropic — the company behind Claude, the AI that serves as the vessel. No one else sees it. It never touches our servers.
If someone shared a key with you, paste it above. Otherwise, create your own key at console.anthropic.com.
You may change your key at any time from within the Inner Ward settings.