Besides this, we have no right to assume, as Hufeland has here done, the insensibility of the child at birth. It is subject to disease before birth; as soon as it draws a breath, it utters loud cries and sobs. To pronounce all its actions “mechanical, instinctive, necessary, automatic,” in fact, is a very easy solution of the question; but I think neither rational nor conclusive. If you prick it or burn it, you regard its cries as proving sensibility to pain; but on the application of air to its delicate and hitherto protected skin, and the distension of its hitherto quiet lung, the same cry, you say, is mechanical and inexpressive. So Leibnitz explained, to his own satisfaction, the struggles and moans of the lower animals as automatic, being embarrassed with metaphysical and moral difficulties on the score of their intelligence and liability to suffering. But no one now espouses his theory, and we must accept, whether we can explain them or not, the facts that the lower animals are liable to pain during their entire existence, and that the heritage of their master is, from and during birth to the last moment of languishing vitality, a sad legacy of wo and suffering.
Unhappily we may appeal, in this discussion, directly to the evidence of our senses, to universal experience and observation. Who can doubt the tortures inflicted in tetanus? to alleviate which, indeed, I have more than once been solicited for poison. Does not every one know the grievous inflictions of cancer, lasting through months and years, and continuing, as I have myself seen, within a short hour of the absolute extinction of life, in spite of every effort to relieve it? The most painful of deaths apparently is that which closes the frightful tragedy of hydrophobia, and patients, to hurry it, often ask most urgently for any means of prompt destruction. But these more intense and acute pangs are not the only form of intolerable agony. Unquenchable thirst, a dreadfully progressive suffocation, confusion of the senses and of thought—these are inflictions that nature shudderingly recoils from, and these, or their manifestations, are scarcely ever wanting on the death-bed.
If any one should ask why I thus endeavor to prove what it is revolting to us all to believe or admit, I answer—first, that truth is always desirable to be known both for its own sake and because it is ever pregnant with ultimate benefit and utility. More than one moribund has expressed to me his surprise and horror—shall I say disappointment too? at finding the dark valley of the shadow of death so rough and gloomy and full of terrors. Is it not better that we should be as thoroughly and adequately prepared for the stern reality as may be, and that we should summon up all the patience and fortitude requisite to bear us through? When the last moment is actually at hand, we can safely assure our friends that they will soon reach a state of rest and unconsciousness, and that meanwhile, as they die more and more, they will less and less feel the pain of dying. Secondly, by appreciating properly the nature and amount of the pangs of death, we shall be led to a due estimate of the demand for their relief or palliation, and of the obligation incumbent on us to institute every proper effort for that purpose with zeal and assiduity. He who believes with Hufeland, that the moribund is insensible, is likely to do little to solace or comfort him.