EUTHANASIA

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2313, 4 December 1925, Page 4

EUTHANASIA

WHEN HUMAN BEINGS SUFFER. SHOULD WE HASTEN DEATH? There lay slowly dying in an agony which even the merciful morphia needle could not wholly alleviate, a little mite of a child. “Oh, doctor!” said the nurse, wrung to the point of hysteria with the pity of it all, herself tortured with witnessing the torture of the child; “could you not give her an overdose and let her go —you know she will linger for days like this ?” “Woman,” said the doctor, turning fiercely upon her. "Woman, are you mad ? Have I the power of life and death?” The doctor, too, was overwrought with the suffering of his little patient whom no skill could now avail; and his misery was accentuated by the knowledge, that, as the nurse had said the child might linger for days. Yet he could do nothing, excepting to try and alleviate the little one’s agony, with just sufficient morphia to “dope” her —but not enough to mercifully end her torture. That, in the eyes of the law, would be murder v It is laid down that Nature must take her course, however cruel, and at whatever cost of human suffering. The “Happy Dispatch”.

Among some savage tribes in older days, at least, it was the custom to give the “happy dispatch” to the suffering and to the aged who would interfere with the activity of the tribe often engaged in "warfare, in rapid marching or flight. Australian aborigines on the march would abandon to die or to recover as fate ordained, ally who fell ill by the way, without any idea of ending their suffering with the club or spear. But they were savages who could ill comprehend suffering, and who, when they rarely fell 111 would generally die as the result of complete surrender to death. But in many other countries savage races would not only refuse aid to the sick, but would club them to death, and also put the old folk out of the way, and deal similarly with an overplus of babies.

To come to our own civilisatic “Euthanasia,” or the painless putting to death of sufferers who have no hope of recovery, has frequently been advocated on humanitarian grounds—■ and it has on rare occasions that we know of, been put into practice, sometimes with dire results to the person who has yielded to the pleadings of the sufferer. Men have boon imprisoned, and even gone to the gallows for exercising this form of humanitarianism. Au American Case. I l The most recent, case of euthanasia to come under notice —and one must conclude that it was skilfully executed, seeing that the practitioner was a medical man —is that cabled from America. This was the pathetic affair of I)r. Harold Elmer Blazey, an aged physician, who killed his imbecile daughter, aged 34, last summer. American newspapers had devoted considerable space to the controversy which ensued, as to whether ‘‘murder for love” should be added to the list of “convenient crimes’' committed under the general heading of "the unwritten law” —which law is very considerably stretched in the land of the Stars and Stripes. Lawyers for the defence urged that the crime of Dr. Blazey (if it was a crime other than In law) was dictated by a father's love and natural desire to bring peace to a suffering child. “A human husk” was how they described the dead woman, in their attempts to justify the killing as “a merciful murder” committed by a parent out

of love and humanity. In this case the jury failed to agree, so that ther. is yet no final answer in America t the appeal to justify euthanasia. Father and Sou. Coming nearer home, there was th. recent case in Sydney, in which a sou yielding to the continued imploration., of a suffering father, supplied bin. with a revolver, and the father endec his own sufferings, it wits move that there had been a particularly strong affection between father ana son, and for this reason doubtless the jury was influenced, while bringing in the unavoidable verdict of murder, in compliance with British law, to ade a rider recommending that the youth be set at liberty. This rider was complied with, the “murderer" being admitted to probation. Of course this was an extraordinary case, and cannot be regarded as forming a precedent. Emulation of this offender’s action, even under the most excusable circumstances, would be highly dangerous. Thc Medical Attitude. The attitude of the medical profes sion on this matter is well suramaris ed in the answer of the doctor to tin nurse in the case of the suffering child:— “Have I the power of life and death?” It is a power that no medical fhac is willing to assume, even though he knows that the death of his patient is in the natural course inevitable. Thc suggestion is made that in cases which seem suitable for the application of euthanasia —where days, weeks, or even months of suffering must accompany thc lingering of life—there should be consultation of, say, three doctors and that if their verdict is that life could only be prolonged ai the cost of suffering to the patient and misery to others, without any hope whatever of the patient’s recovery. then the final act of medicine should ho performed. But medical opinion Is that it would be very hard to got three doctors to take upon themselves the ordering of death. There is in them the inherent fear of taking human life, even though that li?e ho already doomed. And, it ie argued, even three doctors might err in some cases, for patients have been known to recover from the most prolonged and agonising illnesses, after all hope had been abandoned. These may be “miracles”, but many Audi exist. The problem of euthanasia is no easy one to solve.