THE RIGHT TO DIE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1304, 6 December 1911, Page 9

THE RIGHT TO DIE.

JI. MAETERLINCK'S APPEAL TO DOCTORS. In his very beautiful now essay, published in October, an essay brii'nfnl of courage and consolation, M. Maeterlinck writes of Death, and iu the course of it ho enters an eloquent plea against efforts to extend life beyond its "natural term."

"As science progresses," he says,' "it prolongs the agony which is tlu> most dreadful moment and the- sharpest peal; of human pain and horror, for the witnesses, at least. . . All tho doctors consider it their first duty to protract a-s long as possible oven tho most excruciating convnlsions. 'Who has not, at a bedside, twenty times wished to throw himself at their feet aud implore them to show mercy?"

One day, XI. Maeterlinck' believes, this prejudice will strike us ns barbarian, as a relic of the times when humanity was convinced that any known torture was preferable to those awaiting us in die Unknown. Doctors defend it by pleading that there is scarcely ever a certainly that a case is hopeless. But in the majority of cases delay can "Rive but a few days or, at the utmost, a few months of a life that will not bo tho rcnl life, but much rather 'an extended death.'"

On one point doctors are beginning to yield. "They aro slowly consenfimi, when there is no hope left, if not lo deaden at lea<t to hill tho last agonies." But still many of them hesitate, "and, like misers, measure out drop by drop the clemency and peace which they ouslit to lavish." All our knowledge,' therefore, "only helps us.to die in greater p'in than the animals that know nothing." But a day will come, J[. Maeterlinck predicts, when science will no longer hesitate to shorten our misfortunes, "when life, grown wiser, will depart silently :\> its hour, knowing that it has reached its term," even as it withdraws every evening, while, we sleep, knowing (hat its day's task is done.

This appeal to doctors' by ono of tho world's foroino>t men of letters is certain to be widely discussed.