By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and lunatics,
incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards from this vale of
tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many a respectable but otherwise
blameless person to convulsions of great complexity and power. Yet
Dr. McKim seemed only to anticipate the trend of public opinion and
forecast its crystalization into law. It is rapidly becoming a
question, not of what we ought to do with these unfortunates, but what
we shall be compelled to do. Study of the statistics of the matter
shows that in all civilized countries mental and moral diseases are
increasing, proportionately to population, at a rate which in the
course of a few generations will make it impossible for the healthy to
care for the afflicted. To do so will require the entire revenue that
it is possible to raise by taxation—will absorb all the profits of
all the industries and professions and make deeper and deeper inroads
upon the capital from which they are derived. When it comes to that
there can be but one result. High and humanizing sentiments are angel
visitants, whom we entertain with pride and pleasure, but when the
entertainment becomes too costly to be borne we “speed the parting
guest” forthwith. And it may happen that in inviting to his vacant
place a less exacting successor—in replacing sentiment with reason—we
shall, in this instance, learn to our joy that we do but entertain
another angel. For nothing is so heavenly as Reason, nothing so sweet
and compassionate as her voice—
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute.
Is it cruel, is it heartless, is it barbarous to use something of the
same care in breeding men and women as in breeding horses and dogs?
Here is a determining question: Knowing yourself doomed to hopeless
idiocy, lunacy, crime or drunkenness, would you, or would you not,
welcome a painless death? Let us assume that you would. Upon what
ground, then, would you deny to another a boon that you would desire
for yourself?