WHEN DEATH ENDS AGONY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 August 1935, Page 11

WHEN DEATH ENDS AGONY

The Doctor Discusses the Right to Kill

rpHE doctor’s Tight to kill was referred to at a dinner in London of the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women, by a clergyman whp is also a Doctor of Medicine. He was the Rev. Dr. A. W. Oxford, the chairman of the hospital, says the “Daily Telegraph.” He would never forget, Dr. Oxford said, an experience of thirty years ago when he visited a young woman in a poor district who was suffering from cancer. “The woman in her agony appealed to me to kill her. I had not the courage to do so, but I did what was the next best thing. I gave her enough morphia for six nights, telling her I might not be able to call in the meantime, and carefully warning her not to take more than one dbse at a time or she would surely die. But she never did; she remembered her children.” In an interview after the dinner, Dr. Oxford gave some of his views on the question of ending life in incurable cases of disease. . ‘ « “It is a difficult question,” he said. “I do not think it should be in the power of any doctor to end life without some consultation. Such cases, I think, should be investigated by a committee. “In any case the suggestion should never come from the- doctor. It must be at the instigation of the patient. “The woman I attended thirty years ago lived in Hoxton and was about 35 years of age. She was a mother with three children, and they played on the floor while she tossed on the bed in agony.

“I was with her when she died a short time later. It was a ghastly case. “I am 80 years of age, and this is the first time I have spoken about it to a soul. The recollection is still clearly with me.” The subject of the “right to kill” has been much discussed recently. The following are among the opinions that have been expressed: Dr. Selwyn, Dean of Winchester: “I think no Christian principle would be violated if the doctor thought he would alleviate, that person’s pain, even though some risk of life was involved.” i Bishop Weldon: “I would not wholly forbid giving relief in certain circumstances. Painless death must be allowed only in extreme cases of acute illness where more than one doctor is agreed that the case is incurable.” The Rev. A. Wellesley Orr, Vicar of St. Paul’s, Kingston Hill: “Bo many people have gone out by their own hand when,” if they had waited only a few days longer, there would have been a solution.” Dr. C. Killiclc Millard, Medical Officer of Leicester, last August -drew u,p a Bill to make euthanasia (easy death) possible, and proposed that the Bill should be introduced in the House of Lords. It provided that euthanasia should be entirely voluntary. This plea formed the subject of his presidential address to the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Sir William Arbuthnot Lane- said, in regard to this proposal: “Doctors not infrequently end their lives when suffering from’ painful diseases.”