The Fear of Death.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2610, 18 September 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Fear of Death.

IS IT JUSTIFIED?

“The knell, the shroud, the mattock and the grave. 'Plu> deep, damp vault, the darkness w and the worm.” ▼ Surely an unlovely contemplation; but is the actuality itself so’ desperate? i shall endeavor to show that it Is not, aided by some observations selected from a professional experience, covering nearly half a century. Primarily, one may ask, is the fear of death a- constant fact? Probably it exists to a considerable extent among adults. But is it of all mankind generally true that, “He. that cuts off t wen tv years of life cuts off so many rears of fearing death?” ' A drowning man will catch at a straw. One who jumps into the water with the motive of ~ self-destruction, when in face of the ultimate fact, will very often accept means of escape. The instinct of self-preservation is implanted in us by nature, and is shared to a greater or lesser extent by all living creatures. • ... But the- fear of death is, smother matter, and is probably not a natural law, but an acquired peculiarity. Insects and animals do pot seem to possess it—although they all commonly struggle to escape disagreeable predicaments and to save their physical structure when its integrity is threat'll Yet- very many intelligent human bejn tr* shrink from the idea of death, prefornot to talk about it except in a general way, and experience uncomfortable sensations when in its visible presence. This fear is physical. It is not in it s essence moral; nor is it intellectual, and it has nothing directly to do with one’s solicitude as to the future condition of the departed, or with pity as to the distress his demise may have occasioned to others left behind. The fear of death is and always has been very easily dominated by strong emotions. Military valor, religious zeal, the exalted tension of pride or ( ] u ty or affection, easily lead men of the soundest disposition to wholly disregard death and everything pertaining to it; while the innumerable motives —Jealously, pique, anger, disappointment, sorrow, sickness, distress of any '■>l sort pecuniary loss, disgrace, and a * thousand others that lead the suicide —- indicate into what contempt the act of death may be thrpwn by other even trivial emotions. ... c At Ceos, an island in the Aegean Sea, it appears there was a law at one time obliging all the inhabitants over sixty to end° their lives by drinking poppy or hemlock juice; but the law was not enforced except at periods of prospective famine; and of this act Aelian records that the antiquated Ceans, bedecked with wreaths, collected together and drank hemlock with joy to put an end to existence that could no longer be of any benefit to the state. This age of sixty, then, appears to have been early recognised as a point at which one might be justified in making his quietus —and that, too, before the discovery of chloroform. . . The ancient prevalence of hara-kiri in Japan, when sometimes all the followers of a Daiinio slaughtered themselves as a matter of course upon the death of their chief, would seem to indicate a very moderate- fear of death in that nation, although here the stronger emotions of pride, sense of personal honor, disgrace if the act be not performed, are involved; and. the tact that the suttee in India is only restrained by the strong, overshadowing arm or England is another like indication. It may be, then, that our own intensified physical horror of death is the inherited product of centuries o ligious teaching, and that in its roots it has essentially a moral basis. But it is as natural to die as it is to live-and as easy. Practically ah the distress witnessed as taking place in the act of dying is the automatic tissue struggle against dissdution, and is not recognised by the who seems to be acutely suffering, c-asionally in the delirium of fever, in uremia, and other intoxications, m certain brain degenerations witnessed m old age, there is an exhilaration or hap py, peaceful calm that pervades the "T'romember one (tor lady a Swedenborgian, who believed that after death W one would follow the occupation Jtha I T had been most congenial m the presen life. This lady was especmlb babies, fondling them and tbem personal care. When she .came if a lingering, most painful the final moment a beautific smi P vaded her countenance, she ( j s difficult, even, impossible for .» fled time, to say whether the so 1 med _ or not. It was long “ a ical circles whether or not reliable test for death. “vSTSJaS'fSV lOTBjr" Srieii^ ft 01 z"r s* scious in terror and P ro .t ■' « an( j I not seen such a taking can state candidly -witnessed, in scores of deatns I ha - noor and hospital and out a ™^ lg * ng P an d the the very wealthy, the y ' . gome old, the pious and to beof which have, been very main hold, in nearly all of con _ actor at the last momen qtjj e ocscious of what was going • cheerfriljf casional examples of con ore \ ness are tho exception, . » so instances of terminal * * um . One morning I the mesmoned to call at a neig > the sage being that tb ? b ed. Ho house had been dea had been as well as us j morning the night before. In t ha d a maid servant about , enter the seen him leave his no t come to bathroom. As ho . * , t be 6]eepbreakfast, he was becoming ing- Later on, the h<? J roo m, and uneasy, someone entereo n s found the old gentleman ___ —Dead, loosed A post-mortem .exam n , ick iri t he a small puncture Bke 1 1 the main thin, degenerate g* 11 heart . This artery jwt the ,Uicardial sack

Life Usually Has Peasant Termination.

By E. L. KEYES, M.D., in Harper’s Weekly,

heart as in a bag ■ and so tlie method of death became evident. With each pulse beat there had been forced out into the pericardial sack through the- pin-prick hole a few drops of blood, and the gradual accumulation of this blood slowly but relentlessly pressed upon the heart, until that great hollow muscle was painlessly crushed out of function. What could be more gracious than such a death ? And yet this old gentleman may have spent many hours of his more than eighty years of life in vague contemplative terror of the onslaught of the dread destroyer. . A most zealously pious individual, perfectly sure of his soul’s salvation, often shrinks from the contemplation,' of dissolution as strenuously as the hardened sinner indifferent to his soul’s welfare, perhaps stoically accepting his possibility of infinite damnation with a supercilious Emile. And yet. practically, we are all to ourselves immortal. We must all die, we know it, we say it—but not just yet; and, as a general rule, I believe, the “just yet” does not come to us ever, during consciousness, for we always hope; therefore, in very fact, wo are immortal.

1 well remember a kind-hearted old gentleman who, for years, had this -mortal terror of death. After a slight apoplexy, which destroyed the vision of one eye, he became practically bedridden. Ho was obliged to receive constant attention from a trained nurse; he had to be fed, ho saw no one—yet he told me that even in that condition he would willingly live on for ever. On the other hand, I recall a case exactly the reverse. This also was an old gentleman, a lawyer of great prominence. On an occasion, being very ill, he entertained me night after night at length with most philosophic crystallizations of thought relative to life and its termination, but did not directly allude to his own approaching dissolution, which seemed imminent and which he plainly contemplated. He recovered and grew old in sections, as it were. Soft cataract occurred in both his eyes, so that reading, his main source of comfort, was denied him; yet his cataracts could not be removed. His legs failed him, so that he constantly stumbled about the house, but, being of an imperious nature, he would not accept the services of a constant attend - ant. He became restless and could not sleep. ' His stomach gave out and he could not eat—nor did he have any desire to eat. -Other functions faltered, making life a burden. In this condition one day he said to me: “Doctor, —I Shall Continue to Lie Here — on my bed because I am too weak to stand. I shall take sips of water and eat fragments of cracked ice because I am thirsty; but I shall take no more food until I become hungry. I am nou now hungry and see no reason why I should eat food. If by taking food and stimulants I could gain strength’enough to get out of this bed, what would be the advantage? I could not walk about without stumbling; I could not digest my Toed; I could not see to read. I should be nursing a vegetable existence.”

I tried to persuade him to take a brighter view of the situation, but in vain. Finally I said to him, “Well, if I order you any prescription will you take it?” He deliberated a moment, and then Avith a gentle but serious smile, replied: “Doctor, if you will assure me that what you are about to ask me to do will not prolong life, I shall do it.” People Avho are ill, seriously ill, do not, as a rule, ask Avhether they may expect to die or not. In light illnesses they do so ask, tempestuously, sometimes hysterically; but not when the real crisis is imminent. Then they do not in words approach tho real issue. There are exceptions to this, as well as to all rules, among which the most notable that I have encountered Avas that of a certain distinguished statesman. His mind was singularly clear, his emotions, on the Avhole, secondary. His last illness was quite prolonged, and his final sinking away gradual, without pain. Perhaps a day before his death I examined him carefully, as was my custom, finding the usual evidences of slowly ebbing vitality. He had not spoken or taken food for a day or more, and during this period I examined him many times, saying nothing, and ho being, as it seemed, absolutely torpid, making no motion, evincing no sensibility; but manifestly his keen mind had been alert to what was going on, and in seeming jocose reproof at the inefficiency of result of my repeated examinations, he smiled feebly without opening his eyes, and remarked in a pleasant voice, “Well, doctor, am I officially dead yet?” He never spoke again m my hearing; but surely here was no struggle, no regret. In sickness it is the common rule tor whatever dread or terror or horror of death there may be to expend itself during tlie earlier stages of the malady, and when the real termination is at hand the sensibilities and the senses are so obtunded by kindly nature that one sinks to rest as in going to sleep. ' If there be convulsive seizures they are fearful to behold; but when such patients, instead of dying in their convulsions, recover, they have no memory of the seizure; therefore surely the one Avho dies has ’ none. The final agony, as it is called, the gasping, contractile muscular spasm, like a shudder, that bo often accompanies the last breath—these things are reflexes in their physical W av. and do not mean any struggle or

resistance or any consciousness of pain or discomfort. The same may. be said of the mucous rattling in the throat and the seemingly painful struggle. Therefore I believe it to be more than probable that the final act of dying is as simple and as painless as going to sleep—and practically we all die daily, without 'knowing it, when we go to sleep for the night. .—Many Wish for Death, —• either to escape the prolonged suffering or, more often, to get rid ot mental distress of one sort or another. To bear with the latter calls for moral more than physical courage. The suicide; is judged harshly by the sound mind. “When all the blandishments of life are gone, -v The. coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.” 'The advocacy of the propriety of suicide although sustained by serious argument by the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Cynics—by most of the philoso-phers—-was, after all, a material and heathen argument. The axiom, Mori

licet cui vivero non placeat, has been repudiated alike bv the Christian religion, by modern society, and by common sense. A self-respecting character accepts life as a trust to he made the best of and to he rendered up without personal co-operation, just as it was received without personal, solicitation. This contention has always been sustained by the Christian Church, and bt Augustine, in the “City of God, argued against the stoical pretension that reason made man the arbiter of his own life, and that man Avas superior to tlie gods in that he could rid himself of his life, which the- gods could not. or the Stoics maintained that earthly ills —pain, misery, distress, age, etc. Avere reasons making suicide justifiable; but St. Augustine answered that a philosophy which teaches man to ignore complacently the ills of the flesh cannot consistently, ,at the same time ]ustihim in taking his oAvn life to escape these same ills. . But the desire for death, cither by the sound or unsound mind, is apait from this investigation. The present point is, is death itself the horrible thing that so many believe it to be? A woman leaps shrieking from an upper window and is impaled upon an iron picket fence. Lifted off, she groans and writhes in agony and presently dies in torture and distress. The sympathetic spectators sigh with relief, look at one another, and exclaim: “What a horrible death 1 She died in torture.”

And so she did. She died in torture —perhaps, also, she died in a silk dress, but not of it; she died of shock, or hemorrhage, or because some important vital organ Avas thrown out of function. —and not one of these three things is in itself painful. This Avoman might have made the same leap Avith the same shrieks and been impaled in a manner as. painful, entailing all the agony and all the writhing, all the distress, and yet, not having lacerated an important bloodvessel, she might A'ery Avell recover. On the other hand, by the same fall, without the shrieks, she might have struck upon her head, broken her neck, and died without any knoAvledge of ha\ring been hurt or injured in any way. A personal incident demonstrates this assertion to me satisfactorily. One day in March my horse was brought to the door. I mounted, noticing that the asphalt pavement was swept to glittering brightness by the Avind. Presently I became conscious of riding quietly along the road more than a mile from home, but felt uncomfortable about the head.' Removal of my hat showed that it was broken and dirty and disclosed the fact that the scalp was matted with blood. The clothing alsq upon that rude showed evidence of having touched the ground. , „ I asked a policeman if I had fallen from the horse. He grinned assent, manifestly believing me to be tipsy. I turned quietly homeward and entered the stable. The floorman there said to me, “I hear that you have had a bad fall, sir.” I sent for the groom avlio had carried this report to the stable. He affirmed- that, hairing brought around the horse, 1 had mounted. The horse nad started off and immediately gone down upon the slippery pavement, landing me squarely oil my head. The horse went up the street, but turned presently, Avas caught and led back. The groom and another thought I had been killed, as I was unconscious for a moment, but presently I revived, and, in spite of their expostulations, insisted rather incoherently, that having come out for a ride I would, so they helped me rnount and I trotted quietly up the road. I was absolutely unaware of any of these happenings and to this day hai r e no recollection of an- pain or discomfort at the time, or even of having fallen at all, ,and I must have been knocked out for many minutes to have covered the ground to the spot where consciousness returned. The lump and the Avound upon the head, lasting many daA T s, were ample proof that something had happened; yet if l l had never recovered consciousness after the tall death Avould have been absolutely painless and lion-terrible. In short, it seems to me that all physical trouble or distress occurs before death and does not cause death, although it may be a symptom of the thing that really does cause death; and that death finally in itself is a kindly phenomenon. It is surely so.in inness. We suffer the agony of peritonitis, but the agony does not kill. It is the painless sepsis that does the work. We writhe m the torture of renal colic, but it is tho possible kidney suppression and consequent intoxication and other complications that interest tho surgeon, not tho pain. The distress during breathing is Avorse in asthma than is experienced in pneumonia—pneumonia that has been justly called “the old man s friend.” Indeed, in any malady, as a rule, all pain and distress have usually terminated some time before death, which in itself is finally painless.

It would seem natural to expect that advancing age, fully aware of failing function and progressively diminishing vigor, would welcome prospective death, or at least accept it with greater complacency than Avould be the case with rank and vigorous youth, glowing in the consciousness of untrammelled physical capacity. v “Youth with its sunlit, passionate eyes, Its roseate velvety ekm.”

But this does not seem to be the fact. Children, of course, in their innocent, ignorance, look upon death in curious ' wonderment. The healthy youth and vigorous man, unless during a temporary lapse into emotional morbidness or hysterical despondency, consider the event so remote as not to be worthy of .present action; but .old age, jealous of escaping opportunity, desires to hoard the slippery years, and shrinks from contemplating tli© inevitable.

And yet youth is long and age is short. Ennui is frequent in the former, time lags, the years seem unending in spite of the multiplicity of joyous incident. In age the galloping years hardly give us time to read tho numbers on the mile-posts. Happily so:; how dreadful ft Avould be if it were reversed, if youth should gallop, and creeping, creaking age prolong itself Avith interminable (ennui! Campbell puts it aptly *.

“Heaven \ gives our years of fading strength Indemnifying fleetness, And those of youth a seeming length Proportioned to their sweetness.” And yet we well know that no one may be called happy until lie is dead. The dread possibilities of failure and disgrace are often suspended over gray hairs and only fail to fall on account of the timely "intervention of death. How many tendencies to evil—more especially moral failings curbed during the forceful period of robust manhood — assert their supremacy later on and bring down to disgrace a life history that would have sparkled with credit if only a timely death had intervened to prevent the babbling inefficiency of dotage: for truly there is nothing so

undignified, so- naltry, so unworthy, as the vapid foolishness of very advanced age, even if it he not vicious. Therefore, after life has achieved something, death should be looked upon as a welcome visitor, a kindly friend. The motto chosen by John Fiske to adorn his library inculcates admirably a well-recognised point of view: Disco ut semper victurus; Vive ut eras moriturus. Continue to learn as though you were to lii r o foroA’ef; direct your life as if you expected to die to-morroAv. Following this maxim,death becomes an incident in life as acceptable as birth. “Death is the crown of life. Were death denied, poor man would live iu vain. Were death denied, to live Avould not be life. * Were death denied, eon fools Avoukl wish to die.”