Logically, of course, the same principle
should be applied to all incurable disease; and I suspect--indeed I
know--that it is applied when the household have become weary, and the
patient is utterly unable to protect himself or appeal to the law. But
the general application of the principle has been successfully
resisted, on the ground that the terror it would cause, the constant
anxiety and alarm in which men would live if the right of judging when
life had become worthless to them were left to others, would far
outweigh any benefit which might be derived from the legalised
extinction of existences which had become a prolonged misery; and such
cases, as I have told you, are very rare among us. A case of hopeless
bodily suffering, not terminating very speedily in death, does not
occur thrice a year among the whole population of the planet, except
through accident. We have means of curing at the outset almost all of
those diseases which the observance for hundreds of generations of
sound physical conditions of life has not extirpated; and in the worst
instances our anaesthetics seldom fail to extinguish the sense of pain
without impairing intellect.
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