The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-17
cAN MURDrR pr yUsr1rIkps

With sometnlng iike pefsooAcel fecuf- renee some doctor or scientist comes forward with the contention that when person is suffering from an incurabie disease that person should be put out of pain and quietly sent to the grave. We are not 50 much surprised At having such sentiments from men. but we con fess that we are astonished when we And women advocating the same ideas. They are credited with a greater share of humanity than men are. and any evidence of brutality from them is not pleasant
 TAere has lately been held in Phila- ds,rhia meeting of the American Humane Association. and during the ssgsfon one of the speakers dsscrioeo the sufferinss of the victims of late railroad accident. whcreupon a Mrs Totten arose and said with much earn estnsss; If had been in that wreck and had seen cases such as have been described, and had had pistol. would certainly have shot the sufferers to put them out of their misery
 If Mrs. rotten had done this wherein would she have differed from any other murderer. If she should see man suffering from accident and should shoot him to end his misery. she would De a murderess both in intent and deed. So, if doctor has a patient suffering from what he considers an incurable disease and gives that person fatal does in order to end his sufferings, that doctor is murderer. 1t matters not what the condition of the patient might be. We can well understand that when the doctor sees a person suffering great misery he might give sedative or some kind of anesthetic for the humane purpose of giving relief. and owing to peculiar conditions the dose might cause death. In such case we might believe that the physician had not exercised a proper degree of caution. but could not consider him guilty of wiiful murder.
 When a doctor or attendant, man or woman, would shoot person dead be- cause that person was suffering great pain, or when a doctor believes that patient is suffering from an incurable disease and deliberately chloroforms that person to death, we can see no reason to difrerentiate either of those cases from any other murder, The books tell us that murder is the in tentional killing of one person by an- other, and we cannot see that the phy- sical condition of the one whose life Is taken condones or excuses the act
 But the right of the doctor or at- tendant to kill is still further lessened by the possibility of human intelli- gence In the discussion above alluded to mentionwas made of man fastened beneath a wrecked car which has taken fire and in all probability will burn him to death before he can be rescued, and that is one of the cases that Mrs. Totten said she would use pistol on. But even in that sort of case human judgment is not infallible. A change of wind may drive the flames back till the sufferer can be rescued. sudden rain may put out the fire, or the arri- val of competent help may rescue the man. Any one of the several fortuitous may occur to save life which Mrs Totten would deliberately take on the idea that she has right to decide when 1t is proper to act as executioner.
 But that is not all. In cases of dis sase the doctor is not always infallible. The wisest medical man on earth can aot tell when the proper time to take human life has arrived, if we admit hat there, can be proper time. In he words of a contemporary: Have .hese kind -hearted women never heard ,f people whom all the attendant phy- sicians gave up to die and yet who got we'll? Have they never heard of people who were supposed to be actually dead ] md were buried and yet who were not | lead and were exhumed and recovered Who. then, would be rash enough to pronounce a case hopeless and proceed | Q administer chloroform or mor- ,hine?"
 All of us who have observed what vas and is going on around us have had of cases where doctors ana all others declared that recovery was impossible, and all of us have known | Instances where the patients have re- covered after those best qualified to judge have not only abandoned all hope, but have asserted that death was absolutely certain. Can any one say, | these things, that doc tor can always be sure that disease will terminate fatally, and that he has a right to hurry 1t up? They cannot do | 1t, and it really seems to us that noth- | ing but savage brutality or mere sen sationalism would impel any one to take life under such circumstances. In | short. we contend that neither the phy- | sician nor any one else hasa right to take the life he cannot give merely be- cause it appears that death Is inevi- table.