Excerpt from The Medical Tribune, 1882, Vol. 4: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Medicine, Surgery, and the Collateral Sciences The argument that such a practice would interfere with the sanctity of life seems to me groundless. It seems the veriest nonsense to speak of a life as sacred' that has become an intolerable burden to the possessor, a piteous and. Oftentimes repulsive spectacle to friends, and a blank in the community. If the word sacred' as related to life means anything, it means the obligation laid on each one of us to devote it to noble uses while we possess it. The truth is: death is as much in the order of nature as life, but some of her methods of killing are more cruel than has ever been devised by the wit of man. It becomes our duty then, to correct those methods as we do other portentous evils that exist in nature. Another objection that can be offered by the opponents of euthan asia is, that there might be an abuse of the practice. Cruel and designing persons might take advantage of it to rid themselves of troublesome invalids. In short it would leave a way Open for legalized murder. It appears to me the law might be so hedged about with precautions and limitations as to render the chances of a violation of it almost nil. But grant the possibility of it being perverted to base purposes, would it be an exception to other laws wise and good in themselves? If we rejected all reforms which might lead to contingent and remote evils no progress would be made. A Chinese wall would be erected at the threshold of every advance movement. And stagnation would be the result. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.