IT0 TRZ EDITOR OF 'Pill "SPECTATOR."] Srn,—The article on "
Euthanasia " in your issue of January 25th vividly recalls to me an article which appeared in your columns in February, 1873, entitled " Mr. Tollemache on the Right to Die." That article was a friendly, but wholly dissentient reply to my plea. for euthanasia in the Fortnightly Review of the same month. My own article is reprinted, with some modifications, in my "Stones of Stumbling." In the general views expressed in that article I see little to alter? though I now think that the theory which I advocated would, in the present state of public opinion, be almost inoperative. A distinguished physician told me that after reading my article he talked over the subject with an official, probably a house-surgeon, in a cancer hospital, and was assured that if the option of euthanasia were offered to the patients not one of them would accept it. In your article you condemn euthanasia as "revolt against the will of the Most High." I hope I may be allowed to quote what I formerly said in reply to this objection, premising that writing in my youth I adopted an unconciliatory, and perhaps a flippant, tone, which does not commend itself to my old age :— " it is natural and, on the hypothesis, in obedience to the divine ordinance that when we walk in the rain we shvuld get wet; and yet we do that most unnatural and impious thing,—
we hold up umbrellas Indeed, St. Paul's celebreted defe use of passive obedience might be almost. literally para- phrased thus : Things which be. are ordained of Oud; whose, therefore, alters things which be, alters the ordinance of God ; and they that alter shall receive to themselves damnation.'
It is enough for our present purpose to say that the arguments which would forbid the prevention of the suffering incident to death would forbid the prevention of any suffering whatever. But, it is said, the pain of death ought to be endured, as we are told in the Bible that death is the penalty of sin. I reply, in the first place, that this argument, if worth anything, would forbid not merely the extinction of such pain, but its partial mitigation (as by opiates). Also, all suffering is repre- sented as the effect of sin, and especially the suff-ring of child- birth. And the Evangelicals were quite consistent in the opposition that they raised to the use of chloroform in con- finements, until, fortunately, public opinion became too strong for them. May • not their own logic be turned against them, if it she uld one day appear that the uses of the sedative in childbirth and before death involve the same principle, and
must stand or fall together ? . . . If the • stream of tendency' is making for euthanasia, or at leaat for an increased indulgence to suicide in general, we may hope that at ti) distant date public opinion will be modified in regard to suicide in extremis. Such a hope was entertained by so cautious a thinker as the late Yr. W. it. Greg, who represented himself as • wild about eat
and who (eo far as I could judge from a single conversation) w.5 both a more sanguine and a more vehement champion of the cause than I ever was."
Let me put an extreme ease. If a mother goes to see a son dying of an infectious disease, is she not lessening what an insurance company would call the value of her life in the hope, not of lengthening his life, but of comforting his last
moments ? Her devotion will be generally approved; but does it not involve a principle closely allied to that of euthanasia? Nay, is it not a sort of potential euthanasia by proxy ? I am far more sensible of the difficulties which would lie in the way of safeguarding euthanasia than I was when I wrote my defence of it. But your article suggests to me one remark on this head. You speak as if under a euthanasian regime the doctors would administer the poison. But surely the utmost that would be required of them would be that with due precaution they should make it accessible to a bedridden patient. On this subject the late Sir Charles Wheatstone told me, somewhere in the " seventies," an anecdote which I merely give for what it is worth. He had reason to believe that the wife or widow of a distinguished English- man (I refrain from giving particulars) bad suffered from an incurable illness in foreign parts. It was not known what conversation had passed between her and her physician; but one evening he left her with a bottle, which was suspected of containing poison, by her side. At any rate; the bottle was empty next morning, and she was dead. Sir Charles understood that the conduct of the physician had been severely criticised. As at present minded, I neither justify nor condemn that conduct. I am content with saying, in the phrase used by my kind friend the late Sir J. Fitz- James Stephen, that a physician so acting would incur a very grave responsibility.—I am, Sir, &c., LIONEL A. TOCLEHACR2. Hotel d'Angleterre, Biarritz, France.
[There is not a touch of euthanasia in the mother's action, for there is no intention to secure death. Christianity does not bid us basely husband our lives and run no risks, but merely forbids the self-destruction that is intended. The offence is not in the accident of death, but in the intent.— ED. Spectator.]
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