File:Scribner's magazine (1887) (14758894666).jpg

Identifier: scribnersmagazin16newy (find matches)
Title: Scribner's magazine
Year: 1887 (1880s)
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Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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y ; twopolicemen were bringing a swearing,strugg-ling, drunken ruffian with a cuthead to have his wound dressed. Slowlyand sadly walking home, the old manwith tlie two women passed under mywindow—and I thought of the nursesquestion. Familiarity with death is apt to alterones earlier conceptions of it. Twoideas are veiy generally accepted whichexperience shows to be false. One isthat tlie dying usually fear death ; andtlie other, that the act of dying is ac-companied by pain. It is well knownto all physicians, that when death isnear its terrors do not seem to be feltby the patient. Unless the imaginationis stimulated by the frightful jiortrayalof the supposed i)aiigs of death, or ofthe sufferings which some believe thesoul must endure after dissolution, it israre indeed that the last days or hoursof life are passed in dread. Oliver Wen-del Holmes has recorded his protestagainst the custom of telling a personwho does not actually ask to know, thathe cannot recover. As that lovint? ob-
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The fainer sat erect and stern, silent and motionless.—Page 478. server of mankind asserts, so musteveryone who knows whereof he speaksassert that people ahnost always cometo understand that recovery is impossi-ble ; it is rarely needful to tell anyonethat this is the case. When nature givesthe warning, death appears to be as lit-tle feared as sleep. Most sick personsare ver)^ very tired ; sleep—long, quietsleep—is what they want. I have seenmany people die. I have never seenone who seemed to fear death, exceptwhen it was, or seemed to be, rather faraway. Even those who are constantlyhaunted, while strong and well, with adread of the end of life, forget theirfear when that end is at hand. As for the act of dying—the final pas-sage from life to death—it is absolutelywithout evidence that the oft-repeatedassertions of its painfulness are made.Most people are unconscious for somehours before they die ; and in the rarecases where consciousness is retainedunimpaired until a few m

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