EUTHANASIA.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 121, 25 February 1926, Page 2

EUTHANASIA.

WHEN HUMANS 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 tire power of life over death ? ”

The doctor, too, was overwrought with the suffering of his little patient, whom no skill could now avail, and Iris 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 j and alleviate the little one’s agony with just sufficient morphia to “ dope ” her—but not enough to mercifully end her torture. That, in tire eyes of the law, would be murder. It is laid down that nature must take her course, however cruel, and at whatever cost of human suffering. THE “ HAPPY DESPATCH.” Among some savage tribes, in older days at least, it was the custom to give the “ happy despatch ” 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, any 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 ill, 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 civilisation, “ 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 been imprisoned, and even gone to the gallows, for exercising this form of humanitarianism ! AN AMERICAN CASE. 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 Dr. 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 “ conventional crimes ” committed under the g-eneral 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 attempt 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 there is yet no final answer in America to the appeal to justify euthanasia. FATHER AND SON. Coming nearer home, there was a recent case in Sydney, in which a son, yielding to the continued implorations of a suffering- father, supplied him with a revolver, and the father ended .his own sufferings. It was proved that i there had been a particularly strongaffection between father and son, and for this reason doubtless the jury was influenced, whilst bringing in the unavoidable verdict of murder, in compliance with British law, to add a rider recommending- that the youth he 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. THE MEDICAL ATTITUDE. The attitude of the medical profession on this matter is well summarised in the answer of the doctor to

the nurse in the case of the suffering child : “ Have I the po>ver of life and death? ” It is a power .that no medical man is willing to assume, even though he knows that the death of his patien.t is in the natural course inevitable. The suggestion is made that in cases which seem suitable for the application of'euthanasia—where days, weeks or even months of suffering- must accompany the lingering of life—there should be consultation of, say, three doctors, and that if their verdict is that life coulcl only be prolonged at 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 be performed. But medical opinion is that it would be very hard to get three doctors to take upon themselves the ordering- of death. There is in them the inherent fear of taking- human life, even though that life be already doomed. And, it is 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 heefi abandoned. These may be “ miracles,” but many such exist. The problem of euthanasia is no easy one to solve.