There are doubtless instances of death entirely easy. “I wish,” said Doctor Black, “I could hold a pen; I would write how pleasant a thing it is to die.” Dr. George Fordyce desired his youngest daughter to read to him. When she had been reading some time, he called to her—“Stop; go out of the room; I am going to die.” She left him, and an attendant, entering immediately, found him dead. “Is it possible I am dying?” exclaimed a lady patient of mine; “I feel as if going into a sweet sleep.” “I am drowsy, had I better indulge myself?” asked Capt. G. On my giving him an affirmative answer, he turned, and sank into a slumber from which he awoke no more. It is indeed pleasant to know that examples occur of this unconscious and painless dissolution; but I fear they are comparatively rare exceptions to a natural rule; and I regard it as the duty of the medical profession to add to the number by the judicious employment of every means in our power.
And this leads me to a brief consideration of the question so often pressed upon us in one shape or another by the friends of our patients, and sometimes by our patients themselves: If the tendency of any medicinal or palliative agent be to shorten life, while it assuages pain, has the physician a right to resort to it? Even in the latter stages of some inflammatory affections, loss of blood, especially if carried to fainting, will arrest the sharp pangs, but the patient will probably die somewhat sooner: shall we bleed him? Large doses of opium will tranquilize him, or render him insensible; but he will probably sink somewhat earlier into the stupor of death. Shall we administer it, or shall we let him linger on in pain, merely that he may linger? Chloroform, ether, and other anæsthetics in full dose inspired render us insensible to all forms of anguish, and make death as easy, to use the phrase of Hufeland, as being born! Shall we allow our agonized moribund to inhale them? Used in less amount, a degree of relief and palliation is procured, but at the risk of exhausting or prostrating more promptly the failing energies of the system. Shall we avail ourselves of their anæsthetic influences, or are they forbidden us, either absolutely or partially?