Let Them Die Happy

Who is "the meanest man in the medical profession?" Last week the New York State Journal of Medicine thought it had found the man, even if it was too polite to mention his name. "Nothing but the sternest sort of conscience would persuade us to publish such a comment ... on a colleague," said the editors.

The meanest medic had not been caught in an abortion mill, had not brazenly advocated socialized medicine, or neglected a patient. Nothing of the sort. He had contrived to keep a broken-hipped Illinois Civil War veteran alive (he lived to his 106th birthday) by denying him his chief pleasure in life: attending G.A.R. exercises on Memorial Day.

The doctor who would thus doom a patient to savorless old age, said the Journal of Medicine, might well be the president of a local geriatric society "shooting for a record . . . What is his conception of his place in society, of his duty to his patients? Who is he to deny the old man the pleasure of passing the reviewing stand . . . saluting the colors, and, if God is good, falling dead at the long anticipated climax of his life? Who is any man to presume to prolong life at the expense of the sacrifice of every bit of its romance, bite, and color?"

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