DYING BY WILL POWER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 460, 29 December 1930, Page 10

DYING BY WILL POWER

TRAGEDY OF LONELY INDIAN. NOT A CASE OF SUICIDE. A tragedy in w’hich an Indian, who wanted to return to his native country but could not do so, made up his mind to die and did die, was disclosed at an inquest in London recently, on Mahommed Habibulla, aged thirty, a pedlar. Habibulla’s brother stated that deceased arrived in England three years ago from the Punjab, and six months before his death he fell ill with rheumatism. He was lonely, and wanted to return to India. He had enough money but was too ill to go. “I do not think that my brother wanted to go on living,” added the brother. Dr Norman Brown, of St. Andrew’s Hospital, said that Habibulla was admitted there with rheumatism and neurasthenia. Habibulla asked him if he would send him back to India when he was better. Dr Brown told him that he would see what could be done, but Habibulla became sullen, refused to take food, and eventually died from pneumonia following acidosis. “I am sure,” said Dr Brown, “that it was a psychological case. The man made up his mind that, he would die, and he did die.” The coroner, Dr R. L. Guthrie, said that lie did not think that if a man made up his mind to die and did die in consequence the verdict was suicide. “I have seen, when I was in the East in my younger days,’’ the coroner added, “that when an Asiatic makes up his mind he is going to die he does die. ” A verdict of “Death from natural