IN ARTICULO MORTIS. 
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consciousness of pain. In lingering death, in death from that 
disease which piles up our mortality, in consumption, painful 
as it is, terrible even from day to day to witness, not to say 
bear, the action of death, though it may be physically hard, is 
not usually cruel. Striking the young in whom the hope of 
life and belief in life is strong, consumption has for its victims 
those who accredit not its power, who live to their final hour in 
happy plannings of the future and die in the dream. 
In the lingering and painful diseases of later life, in diseases 
we consider yet as hopeless, in diseases where the patient fore- 
knows the end — take cancer or broken heart as examples — 
death is to the sufferer not often an enemy, but a courted 
friend. The afflicted here, in case upon case, counts the hour 
of the release, assured and assuring that death is better than a 
bitter life, and everlasting rest than continual sickness ; that 
good things poured on a mouth that is shut are as messes of 
meat set upon a grave.” 
I could extend this argument greatly by recalling those in 
articulo mortis whose reason has gone astray; I could, by 
explaining the phenomena of death in instances where the 
nervous function is primarily destroyed, strengthen the argu- 
ment ; but the effort is unnecessary. In the end, did I proceed 
to the end of the chapter of diseases, I should have only those, 
unhappily but few, who realise pain and cruelty in death from 
maintaining to the last full mental power in the midst of 
physical dissolution, or those who, ‘‘having peace in their pos- 
session,” “ whose ways are prosperous in all things,” and who can 
“ take meat,” are forced, in the loss and abandonment of selfish 
luxury, to give up all and die. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
I have based this essay on long and careful and truthful 
observation of the phenomena of death. I have written it for 
three distinct objects. 
1. To declare that Nature, which is to us the visible manifesta- 
tion of the Supreme Intelligence, is beneficent in the infliction 
of the act of death ; that thwarted in her ways, she is still 
beneficent, and that she may be trusted by her children, 
2. To declare the great law and intention of Nature, that in 
death there should be no suffering whatever. 
3. To declare to men, that whatever there is in death of 
pain, of terror to the dying ; of terror, of unsubdued sorrow to 
the living, is made pain, made terror, made sorrow ; and that to 
attempt the removal of these is the noblest and holiest task the 
spirit of man can set itself to carry out and to perfect. It is to 
give euthanasia to the individual, millenium to the world. 
