Euthanasia - History

History

According to the historian N. D. A. Kemp, the origin of the contemporary debate on euthanasia started in 1870. Nevertheless, euthanasia was debated and practiced long before that date. Euthanasia was practised in Ancient Greece and Rome: for example, hemlock was employed as a means of hastening death on the island of Kea, a technique also employed in Marseilles and by Socrates in Athens. Euthanasia, in the sense of the deliberate hastening of a person's death, was supported by Socrates, Plato and Seneca the Elder in the ancient world, although Hippocrates appears to have spoken against the practice, writing "I will not prescribe a deadly drug to please someone, nor give advice that may cause his death" (noting there is some debate in the literature about whether or not this was intended to encompass euthanasia).

Euthanasia was strongly opposed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Thomas Aquinas opposed both and argued that the practice of euthanasia contradicted our natural human instincts of survival., as did Francois Ranchin (1565–1641), a French physician and professor of medicine, and Michael Boudewijns (1601–1681), a physician and teacher. Nevertheless, there were voices arguing for euthanasia, such as John Donne in 1624, and euthanasia continued to be practised. Thus in 1678, the publication of Caspar Questel's De pulvinari morientibus non subtrahend, ("On the pillow of which the dying should not be deprived"), initiated debate on the topic. Questel described various customs which were employed at the time to hasten the death of the dying, (including the sudden removal of a pillow, which was believed to accelerate death), and argued against their use, as doing so was "against the laws of God and Nature". This view was shared by many who followed, including Philipp Jakob Spener, Veit Riedlin and Johann Georg Krünitz. In spite of opposition, euthanasia continued to be practised, involving techniques such as bleeding, suffocation and removing people from their beds to be placed on the cold ground.

Suicide and euthanasia were more acceptable under Protestantism and during the Age of Enlightenment, and Thomas More wrote of euthanasia in Utopia, although it is not clear if More was intending to endorse the practise. Other cultures have taken different approaches: for example, in Japan suicide has not traditionally been viewed as a sin, and accordingly the perceptions of euthanasia are different from those in other parts of the world.