Note 142 — KING JALI’AD OF HIND AND HIS WAZIR SHIMAS; FOLLOWED BY THE HISTORY OF KING WIRD KHAN, SON OF KING JALI’AD, WITH HIS WOMEN AND WAZIRS.[55] (continued 2)

The Arabs who had a variety of anæsthetics never seem to have studied the subject of “euthanasia.” They preferred seeing a man expire in horrible agonies to relieving him by means of soporifics and other drugs: so I have heard Christians exult in saying that the sufferer “kept his senses to the last.” Of course superstition is at the bottom of this barbarity; the same which a generation ago made the silly accoucheur refuse to give ether because of the divine (?) saying “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.” (Gen. iii. 16). In the Bosnia-Herzegovina campaign many of the Austrian officers carried with them doses of poison to be used in case of being taken prisoners by the ferocious savages against whom they were fighting. As many anecdotes about “Easing off the poor dear” testify, the Euthanasia-system is by no means unknown to the lower classes in England. I shall have more to say on this subject.