IS IT EASY TO DIE..
"It is as natural to die as to be born," wrote Bacon ; and perhaps (says the Daily Telegraph) in a condition of society in which the laws of hygiene were fully understood and implicitly obeyed mankind might eventually find dissolution as facile and as painless as it is with the beasts of the field. As it is, there is death—and death. An accomplished physician, Dr William Monk, has recently laid down a number of plain and practical rules of medical treatment " in aid of an easy death." Dr Monk points out that modern science lias thrown much light on the diverse modes of dying, with the consolatory result of showing that the act of dying is seldom, in any sense of the word, a very painful ordeal. The most interesting evidence on the subject is that of Dr William Hunter, the brother of the famous anatomist. On his deathbed he retained his consciousness to the lash, and just before he expired he whispered to a friend — " if I had strcr.gth enough to hold a pon, 1 would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." Then there is the testimony of those who have boen restored from the state of apparent death from drowning, which shows, as a rule, that the loss of consciousness has been devoid of pain, or at the most attended by a feeling of oppression across the chest. It is a slumber drifting imperceptibly into the cessation of life. " Death is the brother of Sleep," said the old Greeks,
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Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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261IS IT EASY TO DIE.. Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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