Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/101

Rh death; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent any possible abuse of such duty and means being taken to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question, that the remedy was applied at the express wish of the patient."

After describing the tortures of lingering disease leading to inevitable death, the writer remarks:

"Cases such as this abound on every hand; and those who have had to witness suffering of this kind, and to stand helplessly by, longing to minister to the beloved one, yet unable to bring any real respite or relief, may well be impatient with the easy-going spirit that sees in all this misery—so long as it does not fall upon itself—nothing but 'the appointed lot of man;' and that opposes, as almost impious or profane, every attempt to deal with it effectually.

"Why, it must be asked again, should all this unnecessary suffering be endured? The patient desires to die; his life can no longer be of use to others, and has become an intolerable burden to himself; the patient's friends submit to the inevitable, but seek the means of robbing death of its bitterest sting—protracted bodily pain; the medical attendant is at the bedside with all the resources of his knowledge and his skill ready to his hand; he could, were he permitted, bring to his patient immediate and permanent relief. Why is he not allowed to do so, or, rather, why should not his doing so be a recognized and sovereign duty?"

To the objection that such a course would be a violation of the sacredness of life, the author rejoins:

"It may well be doubted if life have any sacredness about it, apart from the use to be made of it by its possessor. Nature certainly knows nothing of any such sacredness, for there is nothing of which she is so prodigal; and a man's life, in her eyes, is of no more value than a bird's. And, hitherto, man has shown as little sense of the value of man's life as Nature herself, whenever his passions or lusts or interests have been thwarted by his brother man, or have seemed likely to be forwarded by his brother man's destruction. A sense of the value of his own individual life to himself, man has, indeed, seldom been deficient in; and, by a kind of reflex action, this sense has slowly given birth to, and alway underlies, the sense, such as it is, of the value of other men's lives. But even to-day, and amid the most civilized countries of Europe, 'the sacredness of man's life' is thrown to the winds, the moment national or political passion grows hot, or even when mere material interests are seriously threatened. And, indeed, seeing that life is so transitory a thing, and that, at the best, it has to be laid aside forever, within the brief space of its threescore years and ten, it is hard to understand the meaning of the word 'sacred' when applied to it, except in so far as the word may signify the duty laid on each man of using his life nobly while he has it.

"The objection, then, based on the sacredness of life, may be