The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-05-11
DEATH ALWAYS PAINLESS.

|
 Physician of Wide Reputation.
 More material than was the psalmist
 who asked, 70 Death, where is thy
 sting?" the physician of to-day not
 only asks the same question: but an
 swers it.
 Tt has none." says Dr. c. Pruyn l Springfield, who has made extended
 observations of the phenomena of l death in its many forms. In his last
 supreme moments man has no need for spiritual or physical comfort. The
 peace Of mind and body are his with
 out the aid of priest or physician, either" Dr. Stringf1eld holds that dis
 solution not only is painless, but that
 the dying-if conscious at all-become
 reconclled to the approach of 1t. This welcome to the destroyer may be ex- | tended only a minute before life goes 1 out, or the patient may have been waiting his coming for weeks and months
 T have found that most persons un-
 der thirtyflve years old make fight for life to almost the last moments z
 said Dr. Springfield. Beyond thirty
 six and forty years. something in the
 contemplation of death reconciles them to it, or else they welcome 1t as a re- lease from cares and responsibilities.
 The strong young nature, making its instinctlve fight against death, may be
 in mental protest almost to the last
 moment, whereas man of fifty prob-
 ably would realize his position and
 await the end calmly, perhaps for
 hours. But in that supreme moment of
 passing, each would find the peace of
 leaving life.
 Right there is one of the greatest mysteries of death. Even when the mind has become completely reconcil- ed to death we find the whole physical framework fighting it. There is the muscular struggle for breath, some has been dead for hours his muscles will twitch and react from the irrittion of electrical currents. Yet the mind of the dying one may have welcomed death as boon. Long sickness and intense suffering may have much to do with reconciling a person to death long before 1t comes Then many persons in normal heath tire of living. Not for any one rsAAon but because they have figured that life isn't worth the trouble. Two remarkable cases of the kind are under my observation now. They are a widow and her daughter in-law They are not morbid. They would never commit suicide. but they would not care if death should come to- morrow. There Is every reason for 1 their living, too They are wealthy, move in good society and are unusual | ly intelligent. Take those two wo- men, and other conditions being equal, l they will die much more easily than | one who has never thought of death. l No acute disease. either, could shake | them in their desire for death. The | mind is dominant over the body"
 pr. Strngfield believes that person | may die In full possession of his facul- ties up to within one minute or less of | final dissolution.
 "In the case of the man Rigby who lied in the Grand Pacific hotel short time ago, he was conscious to the last He talked of Yorkshire, of his wife and of half dozen other things. | He could have been asked question any other period of his life and he would have been able to answer | It five minutes before he died. He was no unusual example, either. Sometimes It looks as if there was a closing up | of the brain of man until his facili- lies are keener than normal when he is on the threshold of life.
 NO doubt there are visions and hal- just at the point of death, Things get far away. They see trees and streams and meadows. I recall he case of woman who was dying. Her husband was at the foot of the bed trying, when I spoke to him, telling lim if he wished to have a minister present he would better send for one
 But the woman heard me. She started up in fright, exclaiming that 'he was not going to die; that had no fight to frighten her so. She was shaking with the fright of the sug- sestion. tried to soothe her, but she sept crying out that she was not go- ng to die-that she did not want to die. But suddenly she lay back with clos ng eyes, signing that she had found uch peace. Only she was uneasy that Alphonso, at the foot of the bed, was citing so far away. She saw heauti- ul meadows and flowers and birds, but he was uneasy that Alphonso would ot come. So far--away.' she oom- lained with her last breath, and was ( cad at the tant."-Chicago Tri- lt une. IS