Bisbee daily review., 1905-10-24
DEATt. AS A CURE FOR PAIN.

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 CURE FOR PAIN.
 At least once a year we may look for fresh proposition by philanthro- pisis and medical men to put the hopeless sufferer from disease or in- jury out of his misery by killing him. This proposition has been made afresh in the merciful city of Phila- delphia, at a meeting of the American Humane Society, and the one who offered it was a woman. The chang ing humor of the sex was illustrated the other day when a number of girls joined a vivisection class in Chicago, where dogs, cats, horses and birds will be put to death and in intense suffering. to exemplify a few physio- logical facts that were established to everybody's satisfaction years ago; yet this new beseechment to stop pain, instead of adding to or permit ting it, will probably be denounced as yet more cruel.
 There is no question as to the sin cerity of these reformers, and it may be that when the world is a more per feet place than it is at present they wlil carry their pcint; nay, it has been prophesied that they will do more: that they will put to death at birth all who are hideously misshapen or defective. and that the idiot, the luna tic, the person lacking senses and members, will. be chloroformed into the grave, as Dr. Osler did not advo- cate that all of us be gently persuaded away from the world when we have turned sixty. We have a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and one of its duties Is to put to and that the owners seldom think it worth while to save. In the opinion of Miss Helen Hall it is quite as de siEable that people dying of cancer hydrophobia lockjaw. diabetes and consumption, or men roasting under burning cars. should be put out of their misery painlessly and sent to their long sleep.
 Another woman declared that if she found the victim of railroad wreck suffering intensely she would shoot him. Indeed, it has already been pro posed that anesthetics be carried on trains, that they might be admins tered in case of accident, but it does not follow that they need be given in excess, since suffering is eliminated by enough to produce unconscious ness. But the proposition as a whole is opposed more strenuously by the medical faculty than by any others, albeit some physicians have confessed that when a case was hopeless they have remitted their efforts to prolong life, seeing that 1t meant nothing more than pain for the pa tient, and weariness, grief and anx iety for the family and friends.
 Under the existing law it would be impossible to put into practice any of the schemes that have been proposed, however merciful their intent The law would regard the person who should end the life of another as a murderer; and, indeed, the danger of permissive law would be that, ex-- cept under very careful safeguards which could not always be secured in such emergencies as burnings and col lisions, it would be in the power of designing persons to take human lives and render no accounting. The attitude of the physician is that there is always hope so long as life lasts, and countenance is given to this the ory by the remarkable recoveries which teem in medical history. The sanctity of life is still supreme, not only in codes of law, but codes of ethics, and while it might be an act ual gain in the practices of humanity to eliminate physical and even mental tortures by death, we shall not ex- pect to see any practical result from the advocacy of extreem measures. like those proposed in the Philadel- phia conference, A more Spartan spirit may animate our children