The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-09-14
SCIENCE MIsAPPLIED.
Judge BALDWIN Emphasizes the
Right of Man to Die.

Right of Man to Die.
From the Philadelphia Ledger
New Haven, Conn. Sept. 1O.-Judge ST.
mon H. Baldwin, the member of the Con-
neeticut Supreme Court and of the Yale
Law School Faculty who said in Sara
toga last week that physicians often do
wrong in prolonging life, add
ed to the statements made
In his Saratoga address by
some emphatic declarations on the impro-
priety of proonglng life in cases of oll
men and infants. Judge Baldwin said:
Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III
at the age of rs, was seized by a disease
evidently mortal. The court physician
succeeded in keeping her alive in lingering
agonies for two or three months.
Perhaps the annals of American presi-
dents would furnish as sad memories of
ike effects of science misapplied. In fact,
Throughout the civilized word Che higher
the station or the greater the means of
the sufferer by a mortal malady tine less
can he hope for a natural death.
Every man is set on earth as a soldier
is set at his post of duty He is like
soldier barred from deserving his station
until he is relieved by the authority that
assigned him to it, Suicide. in other
words. is inadmjssible But the man
struck by fatal illness is called off from
his post. The call has come. The sentry
Is to be relieved. Not a new sentry, but a
dozen, are to take his place
81 speak of the hopeless case-of the
victim of a cancer, which has eaten Its
way to the verge of some vital organ: of
the sufferer from consumption of the old
man, whose years have run their course
Particularly is this the case with the Old
man.
I'm old age the outward manifestations
of an anterior lesion seldom indicate that
more than one organ is affected, and are
often hardly noticeable at all. The patient
does not know that he is a patient at all
There is no occasion that he should. The
weakest part of his bodily mechanism has
broken down. Why patch it up? Another
Is hardly less weak and must needs sue
cumb, Better for him and for his friends
that his last days should be unclouded by
the apprehension of coming death, and the
change come to him quietly as a dream in
sleep.
LAS the old man has a right TO a natural
death, so has the unfortunate babe, that
is born into the world with physical de-
fects that, but for a surgical operation,
WOultl Ill a lew hOui5 Oi utSS tdht IL out VI
it, when this surgical operation can only
save the life by making II a daily and
hopeless misery. If any physician is here he
perhaps knows what / mean. He has
perhaps, himself put the case frankly be.
fore unhappy parents and yielded to their
desire to save their child from death al any
cost He has watched the sickly infant
the feeble childhood. the solitary youth
the long years beyond. of daily discomfort
self-abhorrence and separation from the
world Nature has her invariable laws. BY
one OF them, malformation, preventing the
due exercise Of any vital function. leads 10
death.
1.-THE suffering will not be long. The
physician can reconstruct the body, but is
il In such a case worth while? Is IL not
rather a sin against the helpless being
who, for no fault of his, enters the world
under conditions that forbid his enjoyment
of anything, and who could he be consult
ed would say Leave me 10 my God "