Monday 5 October 2009

A campaign for euthanasia--from 1906

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.
Proverbs 8:35-36

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12 (also Proverbs 16:25)

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,...
...And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Romans 1:22,28

From the front page of The Evening Journal, Edmonton, Alberta, Saturday, January 6, 1906:

HASTEN DEATH
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The Startling Doctrine of a Cambridge Professor.
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Chloroform the Aged and Mortally Afflicted, he says.
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Special to The Journal.
Philadelphia, Jan.6.--Dr. Charles Elliott Norton, of Cambridge, has joined forces with Anna E. Hall, of Cincinnati and with Mrs. Maud Bellington, in a campaign of killing off of hopelessly insane, hopelessly diseased, and victims of accidents. His views are expressed in a letter written to Miss Hall, and made public here to-day.
Setting aside all doubtful cases, he says that no right thinking man would hesitate to give a dose of laudanum, sufficient to end the suffering and life together of a victim of an accident from the torturing effects of which recovery was impossible, nor should a reasonable man hesitate to hasten death in case of mortal disease such as for example cancer when it has reached a stage of incessant pain and when the patient desires to die. Prolonging of life in such a case by whatever means is criminal cruelty. With old persons whose mind has become a chaos of wild imaginations, productive of constant distress, not only to the sufferer but all who live with and attend him, then the plain duty is not to prolong but to shorten life.

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