EUTHANASIA. 463 



beings in a thousand can be said to die in the condition of 

 euthanasia. Blumenbach, it is worthy of remark, died in 

 the beginning of 1840, aged eighty-eight, having retained 

 his faculties to the last. He continued to lecture up to a 

 few days before his death, and with the spirit and humour 

 that had always been his wont. Hufeland was of opinion 

 that, were it not for disease or accident, or other extraneous, 

 cause, the natural term of man's existence, ending in eutha- 

 nasia, might be fixed at about two hundred years. He con- 

 sidered the assertion strengthened by its agreement with the 

 proportion between the time of growth and the duration of 

 life. An animal, according to Hufeland, lives eight times as- 

 long as it grows ; and the growth of man can be hardly looked 

 upon as complete until twenty-five. According to this cal- 

 culation, the term of human euthanasia would of course be 

 two hundred years. 



Hufeland occupied by no means a solitary position among 

 physiologists in respect to this conclusion. Blumenbach was 

 of the same opinion; so was Buff on. Those who uphold 

 this belief have much to advance in support of it. Take 

 almost any extreme case of old age of which records are 

 extant, and ifc will be found that death came through the 

 operation of some extraneous cause. Take the case of Old 

 Parr, for instance, who died at one hundred and fifty-two. 

 We shall find he did not actually wear out; he was killed 

 by kindness. 



Who of us, having arrived at the age of one hundred 

 and fifty-two, would mind dying under the perpetration of 

 such kindness as I find recorded in a certain ancient book 

 entitled The Old, Old, very Old Man, being a chronicle of 

 Mr. Parr's last days? From the account in this book, it 

 seems that the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, being in Shrop- 

 shire, heard of the venerable Mr. Parr ; < when,' states my 

 record, ' his lordship was pleased to see him, and in his innate 

 noble and Christian piety, he took him into his charitable 



