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Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Except as
permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this
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 About the Authors
Dr. Wm. Arthur Conklin is an associate professor and Director of the Center
for Information Security Research and Education in the College of Technology
at the University of Houston. He holds two terminal degrees, a Ph.D. in Business
Administration (specializing in Information Security) from The University of
Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the degree Electrical Engineer (specializing
in Space Systems Engineering) from the Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, CA. He holds CompTIA Security+, CISSP, CSSLP, CRISC, DFCP,
GICSP, and CASP certifications. An ISSA Fellow, he is also a senior member of
ASQ and a member of IEEE and ACM. His research interests include the use of
systems theory to explore information security, specifically in cyber-physical
systems. He has coauthored six security books and numerous academic articles
associated with information security. He is active in the DHS-sponsored
Industrial Control Systems Joint Working Group (ICSJWG) efforts associated
with workforce development and cybersecurity aspects of industrial control
systems. He has an extensive background in secure coding and is a former co-
chair of the DHS/DoD Software Assurance Forum working group for workforce
education, training, and development.

Dr. Gregory White has been involved in computer and network security since
1986. He spent 19 years on active duty with the U.S. Air Force and is currently
in the Air Force Reserves assigned to the Pentagon. He obtained his Ph.D. in
Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1995. His dissertation topic
was in the area of computer network intrusion detection, and he continues to
conduct research in this area today. He is currently the Director for the Center
for Infrastructure Assurance and Security and is an associate professor of
computer science at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Dr. White has
written and presented numerous articles and conference papers on security. He is
also the coauthor for five textbooks on computer and network security and has
written chapters for two other security books. Dr. White continues to be active in
security research. His current research initiatives include efforts in high-speed
intrusion detection, community infrastructure protection, and visualization of
community and organization security postures.

Dwayne Williams is Associate Director, Special Projects for the Center for
Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) at the University of Texas at San
Antonio and has more than 22 years of experience in information systems and
network security. Mr. Williams’s experience includes six years of commissioned
military service as a Communications-Computer Information Systems Officer in
the U.S. Air Force, specializing in network security, corporate information
protection, intrusion detection systems, incident response, and VPN technology.
Prior to joining the CIAS, he served as Director of Consulting for SecureLogix
Corporation, where he directed and provided security assessment and integration
services to Fortune 100, government, public utility, oil and gas, financial, and
technology clients. Mr. Williams graduated in 1993 from Baylor University with
a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science. Mr. Williams is a Certified Information
Systems Security Professional (CISSP), CompTIA Advanced Security
Practitioner (CASP), and coauthor of McGraw-Hill’s Voice and Data Security,
CompTIA Security+ All-in-One Exam Guide, and CASP CompTIA Advanced
Security Practitioner Certification Study Guide.

Roger L. Davis, CISSP, CISM, CISA, is an Account Manager for Microsoft. He

has served as president of the Utah chapter of the Information Systems Security
Association (ISSA) and various board positions for the Utah chapter of the
Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). He is a retired Air
Force lieutenant colonel with 35 years of military and information
systems/security experience. Mr. Davis served on the faculty of Brigham Young
University and the Air Force Institute of Technology. He coauthored McGraw-
Hill’s CompTIA Security+ All-in-One Exam Guide and Voice and Data Security.
He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from George Washington
University, a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young
University, and performed post-graduate studies in electrical engineering and
computer science at the University of Colorado.

Chuck Cothren, CISSP, is a Principal Solutions Specialist at Symantec

Corporation applying a wide array of network security experience, including
performing controlled penetration testing, incident response, and security
management to assist a wide variety of clients in the protection of their critical
data. He has also analyzed security methodologies for Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) systems and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
systems. He is coauthor of the books Voice and Data Security, and CompTIA
Security+ All-in-One Exam Guide.

About the Technical Editor

Bobby E. Rogers is an Information Security Engineer working as a contractor
for Department of Defense agencies, helping to secure, certify, and accredit their
information systems. His duties include information system security engineering,
risk management, and certification and accreditation efforts. He retired after 21
years in the United States Air Force, serving as a network security engineer and
instructor, and has secured networks all over the world. Bobby has a Master’s
degree in Information Assurance (IA), and is pursuing a doctoral degree in
Cybersecurity from Capitol Technology University, Maryland. His many
certifications include CRISC, CISSP-ISSEP, C|EH, and MCSE: Security as well
as the CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, and Mobility+ certifications.
 Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to the many security professionals who daily work to
ensure the safety of our nation’s critical infrastructures. We want to recognize
the thousands of dedicated individuals who strive to protect our national assets
but who seldom receive praise and often are only noticed when an incident
occurs. To you, we say thank you for a job well done!

We, the authors of Principles of Computer Security, Fourth Edition, have many
individuals who we need to acknowledge—individuals without whom this effort
would not have been successful. This edition would not have been possible
without Tim Green, whose support and faith in the authors made this edition
possible. He brought together an all-star production team that made this book
more than just a new edition, but a complete learning system.
The list needs to start with those folks at McGraw-Hill Education who worked
tirelessly with the project’s multiple authors and contributors and led us
successfully through the minefield that is a book schedule and who took our
rough chapters and drawings and turned them into a final, professional product
we can be proud of. We thank all the good people from the Acquisitions team,
Tim Green and Amy Stonebraker; from the Editorial Services team, Jody
McKenzie and Howie Severson; from the Illustration and Production teams,
James Kussow and Amarjeet Kumar and the composition team at Cenveo
Publisher Services. We also thank the technical editor, Bobby Rogers; the copy
editor, Bill McManus; the proofreader, Paul Tyler; and the indexer, Jack Lewis;
for all their attention to detail that made this a finer work after they finished with
it.
We also need to acknowledge our current employers who, to our great delight,
have seen fit to pay us to work in a career field that we all find exciting and
rewarding. There is never a dull moment in security, because it is constantly
changing.
We would like to thank Art Conklin for herding the cats on this one.
Finally, we would each like to individually thank those people who—on a
personal basis—have provided the core support for us individually. Without
these special people in our lives, none of us could have put this work together.
—The Author Team

To Susan, your love and support is what enables me to do all the things I do.
—Art Conklin, Ph.D.
I would like to thank my wife, Charlan, for the tremendous support she has
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I would like to thank my wife, Charlan, for the tremendous support she has
always given me. It doesn’t matter how many times I have sworn that I’ll never
get involved with another book project only to return within months to yet
another one; through it all, she has remained supportive.
I would also like to publicly thank the United States Air Force, which
provided me numerous opportunities since 1986 to learn more about security
than I ever knew existed.
To whoever it was who decided to send me as a young captain—fresh from
completing my master’s degree in artificial intelligence—to my first assignment
in computer security: thank you, it has been a great adventure!
—Gregory B. White, Ph.D.
Josie, thank you for all the love and support. Macon, John, this is for you.
—Chuck Cothren
Geena, thanks for being my best friend and my greatest support. Anything I am
is because of you. Love to my kids and grandkids!
—Roger L. Davis
To my wife and best friend, Leah, for your love, energy, and support—thank you
for always being there. Here’s to many more years together.
—Dwayne Williams
 ABOUT THIS BOOK

Important Technology Skills

Information technology (IT) offers many career paths, and information security
is one of the fastest-growing tracks for IT professionals. This book provides
coverage of the materials you need to begin your exploration of information
security. In addition to covering all of the CompTIA Security+ exam objectives,
additional material is included to help you build a solid introductory knowledge
of information security.
 Proven Learning Method Keeps You on Track
Designed for classroom use and written by instructors for use in their own
classes, Principles of Computer Security is structured to give you
comprehensive knowledge of information security. The textbook’s active
learning methodology guides you beyond mere recall and—through
thought-provoking activities, labs, and sidebars—helps you develop
critical-thinking, diagnostic, and communication skills.

Effective Learning Tools

This feature-rich textbook is designed to make learning easy and enjoyable and
to help you develop the skills and critical-thinking abilities that will enable you
to adapt to different job situations and to troubleshoot problems. Written by
instructors with decades of combined information security experience, this book
conveys even the most complex issues in an accessible, easy-to understand
format.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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at honorable ransom, and even treating them while prisoners on
parole as guests on terms of equality, entertaining them at their
boards, and holding sacred to them all the rights of hospitality.
In no respect, however, had a wider change occurred in the
habits of the nation than in the treatment of their women, who,
although not certainly admitted to the full liberty of Christian ladies,
were by no means immured, as in their native land, in the precincts
of the Harem, “to blush unseen, and waste their sweetness on the
desert air,” but were permitted, still under the guardianship of
duennas, and with their trains of Indian eunuchs, and further
protected by their veils from the contamination of unholy glances, to
be present at festivals, at tournaments, nay! even at banquets,
when none but the members of the family or guests of high
consideration were expected to be present.
It is not, by the way, a little singular that almost in exact
proportion as the Moors enlarged the liberty of their women, by the
example of the Spaniards, did the Spaniards contract that of their
own bright-eyed ladies, by the example of the Moors; and for many
years the rigor of the Spanish duenna was scarcely inferior to that of
the Raid of a Moorish harem, or the ladies under charge of the one
much more obvious to the gaze of the profane, than the beautiful
slaves of the latter.
Did not, therefore, the beautiful Leila Ayesha rejoice and exult in
the comparative freedom which she enjoyed among the liberal
Moors of Spain, which as fitted to enjoy as the favorite child of a
wise father, enlightened far beyond the prejudices of his nation or
his time? In his own younger days he had been a traveler, had
visited Venice and even Madrid, in both of which cities he had been
a sojourner in the character of ambassador, and had thus, like the
wily Ulysses, “seen the cities of many nations and learned their
understandings.” Their languages he spoke fluently: he even read
their works, and, although a sincere and faithful Mussulman, he had
learned to prize many of the customs, to appreciate the principles,
and in some instances to adopt in his heart at least the practices of
the Christians.
 Too wise openly to offend the prejudices of his people—and
nothing would have done so, more decidedly or more dangerously
than any infringement of the sanctity of the harem—he had not
dared, absolute as he was, to grant to his daughter that full liberty
founded upon the fullness of trust which he had learned to admire in
Venice. Still he had done all that he could do without offending
prejudices or awakening angry opposition. He had made Ayesha,
from her earliest years, the companion of his leisure hours; he had
educated her in all that he himself knew, he had consulted her as a
friend, he had confided in her as a human soul, not treated her as
the mere pet and plaything of an hour.
And now as she grew up from an engaging child to a fair
marriageable maiden, accomplished, intellectual, thoughtful, not an
irresponsible being, but a responsible human creature, with the
beauty, the impulsive nature, the passionate heart of the Moorish
girl, but with the reason, the intellect, the soul of the Spanish lady—
Muley Abderrahman, who was waxing into years, began to doubt
whether he had done wisely in training up the child of Mequiñez, the
offspring of the desert, to the arts, the accomplishments, the hopes,
and the aspirations of the free Venetian dama—began to look
around him anxiously to see where he might bestow the hand of her
whom he had learned to cherish and esteem even above his people
or his power. He saw none, on that side of the Mediterranean, with
whom she could be other than a slave—the first and mistress of the
slaves, indeed, but still one of them—a beautiful toy to be prized for
beauty, while that beauty should yet endure; if faded, to be cast
aside into the sad solitude of neglect for a newer plaything, perhaps
to be imprisoned—as a discrowned and discontented queen, and
therefore dangerous—in some distant and dim seraglio on the verge
of the great burning desert.
And was this a fate for the bright, the beloved, the beautiful, the
sage Ayesha?
Thence was born the idea of the embassy to Boabdil. He knew
the kings of Granada civilized and cultivated far before those of
Tetuan or Tafilet, or even Mequiñez or Mecca—he knew that they
had adopted, in many respects, the usages of the Christian cavaliers,
and not least among these, their chivalrous courtesy and graceful
respect for the fair sex—he knew them powerful and wealthy, and
possessed of a land the fairest on the face of the earth, the glorious
kingdom of Granada. At this time, although the war had commenced
between Ferdinand and the Moorish princes, which was to terminate
at no very distant day in the total overthrow of the Saracenic empire
in Spain, it as yet lagged indecisively along, with no preponderance
of this or the other force; nor could there be any doubt that a
declaration on the part of the Sultan of Mequiñez, backed by the
reinforcement of a Moorish and Berber, and an active naval warfare
along the coasts of Spain, would not only secure Granada from any
risk of dismemberment, but even wrest a permanent
acknowledgment and durable peace from the Christian kings of the
Spanish provinces.
Boabdil was at this time formally unwedded, although, like every
other prince or magnate of his people, he had his wives, his
concubines, his slaves innumerable. He was notoriously a leaner to
the soft side of the heart, a fervent admirer of beauty, and was,
moreover, a kind-hearted, gracious and accomplished prince. That
he would be captivated by the charms of the incomparable Ayesha,
even apart from the advantages which her union would bring to
himself and to his people, could not be doubted; and should such an
union be accomplished Muley Abderrahman felt well assured that he
should have obtained for the darling of his heart all that he desired,
freedom of life, a suitable partner, and security for her enjoyment of
all her cherished tastes and respected privileges.
Still Muley Abderrahman, wiser than any Moslem father of that
age, wiser than most Christian parents of any age, was not inclined
to set down his own idea of what should be her good, with his
absolute yea! as being her very good. He had, strange thing for a
Moor! an idea that a woman has a soul—strange and unorthodox
thing for a father! an idea that his daughter had a heart; and that it
might not be such a bad thing after all for her ultimate happiness
that her heart should be in some degree consulted.
 She went, therefore, fancy free and untrammeled even by the
knowledge of her father’s wishes, on a visit to her kinsfolk of
Granada, entirely unsuspicious that any secret of state policy was
connected with the visit to that land of romance and glory, of beauty
and adventure, which was to her one long holyday. Of all her train,
indeed, there was but one who was privy to the Sultan’s secret
wishes old Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali, the eldest of the sovereign’s
councillors, like some, himself a traveler, and like himself, imbued
with notions far more liberal than those of his time or country. To
him it was entrusted, therefore, while seemingly inattentive to all
that was passing, to observe strictly every shadow which might
indicate whence the wind was about to blow—to take especial note
of Boabdil’s conduct and wishes, and, above all, to omit no
opportunity of discovering how the fair Ayesha might stand affected
toward her royal cousin.
Gaily and happily had passed the days, the weeks, the months—
it was still truce with the Spaniard, and days and nights were
consumed in tilts, in tournaments, in hawking-parties on the
beautiful green meadows of the Vega, beside the bright and brimful
streams, adjuncts so necessary to that royal pastime, that it was
known of old as the “Mystery of Rivers”—hunting-parties in the wild
gorges of the Alpuxawa mountains, banquets at high noon, and
festivals beneath the glimmering twilight, beneath the full-orbed
moon, that life was, indeed, one long and joyous holyday. Boabdil
was, in truth, of a man a right fair and goodly specimen—tall, finely
formed, eminently handsome, graceful and affable in manners,
kindly in heart and disposition, not untinctured with arts and letters,
nor deficient in any essential which should become a gentle cavalier
—as a monarch, when surrounded by his court, and seated in his
place of state in the Hall of Lyons, of a truth he was a right royal
king—as a warrior, in the tilt-yard his skill, his horsemanship, his
management of all weapons, were the admiration of all beholders.
In the field his gallantry and valor were incontestable. What, then,
was wanting that Boabdil was not a perfect man, a real cavalier, a
very king? Purpose, energy, will—will that must have its way, and
cannot be denied, much less defeated.
A prince of a quiet realm, in tranquil times he had lived honored
and happy, he had been gathered to his fathers among the tears of
his people, he had lived in the memory of men as a good man, an
admirable king, the father of his people.
Fallen upon evil times, thrust into an eminence for which he not
only was, but felt himself to be unfit, unequally matched against
such an enemy as Ferdinand, the one weak point outweighed all the
fine qualities and noble virtues; and he lived, alas! to be that most
miserable, most abject of all human things, a dethroned, exiled,
despised king!
And did Ayesha, from beneath the screen of girlish levity, while
seemingly steeped to the lips in the rapturous enjoyment of the
liberty, the life of the present moment, did Ayesha see and foresee
all this? At least, when Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali wrote to his friend and
patron the Sultan, and that but shortly after their arrival, that
Boabdil was so evidently and obviously enamored of his mother’s
lovely guest, that he would not only too eagerly court the alliance,
backed as it was by advantages so kingly, but that he verily believed
he would woo her to his throne, were she the merest peasant’s
child. He wrote nothing of Ayesha!
Again he wrote that he could not doubt she had perceived her
royal cousin’s love, and that her manner toward him was so frank, so
free, so unrestrainedly joyous and confiding, that he was well
assured that all went well, and that she returned the affection of
Boabdil, and rejoiced in his love.
But Muley Abderrahman, shook his head and knit his brow, as he
read the letter, and muttered through his thick moustache, “Ay! he is
a good man—a good man is the Hadj Abdallah, and a wise one, but
he knows nothing of a woman’s heart—how should he?”
When he sent the next dispatches to his old friend and
counsellor, there was a brief private note attached. “Is the Leila
Ayesha,” he asked, “never grave, never abstracted, never shy, and
almost sad—does she never flee from the gayety of the festival, the
tumult of the chase, into privacy and solitude—does she never fail to
hear when addressed, to see when encountered—does she never
weep nor sigh when alone—in a word, is she in nowise changed
from what she was at Mequiñez?”
And the reply came, “Never. Wherefore should she? Is she not
the apple of all eyes, the idol of all hearts? Her laugh is as the music
of the soul, her eye-glance the sunbeam that enkindles every heart.
She is the star of the Alhambra, the loadstone of the king’s soul.
Wherefore should she weep or sigh? I have questioned her
handmaids—never! Yes—the Leila Ayesha is changed. In Mequiñez,
she was as a sunbeam thrown on still waters. Here in Granada, she
is the sunbeam thrown on the dancing fountain, reflecting happy
light on all around her. In Mequiñez, she was as a sweet song-bird,
feeding her soul on her own harmonies in silence. Here in Granada
she is as the sweet song-bird, enrapturing all within her sphere by
the blithe outpourings of her joyous melodies. Yes—the Leila Ayesha
is changed. My Lord Boabdil loves the Leila Ayesha; the Leila Ayesha
knows it, and is glad.”
Then Muley Abderrahman shook his head, and pondered for a
while, and muttered—
“She loves him not—She loves him not. The Hadj Abdallah is
good and wise with the wisdom of men—but of the hearts of
women, he knows nothing—how should he? for he never saw a
woman.”
And the old king, far distant, saw more of what was passing in
the fair girl’s heart than the wise councillor who was present—but he
judged it best to tarry and abide the event—and he tarried, but not
long.
Had he been present on that sultry summer’s evening, and
looked upon his lovely child as she sat gazing out in such serenity of
deep abstraction over the sunny Vega—over the fragrant orange
groves and glowing vineyards, toward the glistening hill-tops of the
Spaniards—his question would have answered itself, and at the first
glance he would have seen that she loved.
The child had discovered that it had a heart—the creature had
divined that it had an immortal soul—the child had become a woman
—a very woman.

With all a woman’s smiles and tears,

And fearful hopes and hopeful fears,
And doubts and prayers for future years.

Leila Ayesha loved—but whom? At least not Boabdil! Happily, not

Boabdil.
Even as she gazed, the orb of the gorgeous sun sank behind the
distant hills, and at once—clear, shrill, and most melodious—up went
the voice of the Muezzins, from every minaret throughout the
gorgeous city, “To prayer, to prayer. There is no God but God, and
Mahomet is his prophet. Faithful, to prayer, to prayer!”
And instant at the cry every sound ceased through the royal
residence—every sound through the splendid city—every sound
through the wide Vega. Every turbaned head was bowed in prayer,
and a sabbath stillness seemed to consecrate the bridal of the earth
and sky.
Ayesha rose from her divan, and while her lips murmured the
words of devotion, and her fingers ran rapidly over the beads of her
Comboloic or Moorish rosary, a strange, faltering flush ran over her
fair brow. Her orisons ended, she caught some of the spray of the
fountain in the palm of one of her fairy hands, and scattered it thrice
over her long, dark tresses, on which it glistened in the soft
moonbeams; for the moon now alone occupied the heavens, on the
fragrant hills of the black hyacinth.
Again she resumed her attitude on the divan, but not her
occupation; for the mood of her mind was altered, and for a while
she hummed the burthen of an old, melancholy Moorish ballad—an
old Moorish love-song, the words of which corresponded in no small
degree to our own, “Oh! willow, willow”—since the proverb still holds
good of burned Morocco or bright Spain, as of green, merry England
—

“For aught that I did ever hear—

Did ever read in tale or history,
The course of true love never did run true.”

Ere long from the city gates far distant was heard the din of
martial music—first, the deep clang of the kettle-drums and atabals
alone, and the clear flourish of the silver trumpets which announced
the presence of the king, and these only at intervals above or
between the trampling of hoofs, the clash of armor, and the cheering
of an excited multitude. Anon nearer and nearer came the sounds,
with the clash of cymbals and the soft symphonies of lutes, and the
clear, high notes of flutes and clarionets among the clangor of the
trumpets, and the brazen rattling of the drums.
Nearer and nearer yet—and it is now at the Alhambra gates.
She started to her feet, and leaned far out of the embrasure
commanding all the city, but her eye marked one object only, the
royal train filing into the palace gates, from the royal sports on the
Vega ended—and in that train, on but one person.
It was no turbaned head or caftaned form on which that ardent
eye was fixed, now kindled into all a Moresca’s ecstacy of passion; it
was on a tall Spanish crest and lofty plume. And, as if by a secret
instinct, as her gaze was bent downward to the horse-shoe arch of
the Alhambra gate, his glance soared upward to the airy turret’s top,
and readily detected what would have escaped a less observant
watcher, the dark eyes of his fair Ayesha gleaming through the palm-
leaves and passion-flowers; their passionate fire half quenched by
the tears of tenderness and hope.
His Ayesha—his—the Conde of Alarcos, proudest grandee of
Spain—the favorite child of the Spaniard’s deadliest foe, the Sultan
of Morocco.
The Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali’s next dispatch contained much
important tidings concerning a twenty years’ truce to be concluded
between the King Boabdil, of Granada, and the King Ferdinand, of
Spain—and much graver gossip of the noble Conde of Alarcos,
Ferdinand’s ambassador; of his high feats of arms, and gentle feats
of courtesy—of how all the court admired him, and how the Lady
Ayesha shunned him, and how she was less frequent at the falconry,
less frequent at the chase, less frequent at the festival, less frequent
at the royal banquets—and how her hand-maidens reported that
their mistress sighed all the time and often wept, and sat long hours
gazing upon nothing, and played no more upon her lute, nor sung
the songs of Islam—and how she was—he feared—ill at ease, and
pining for her native land.
And when Muley Abderrahman read the letter he shook his head,
and muttered—
“Ay, she loves now, but it is the wrong one—a Nazarene, a dog,”
and he tore his beard and wept. That night a royal courier rode hard
from Mequiñez to Saleè, and the next day a fleet galley scoured the
way across the narrow seas to the fair shores of Granada.
The embassy should return at once to Mequiñez. Now hour of
delay—too late.
The embassy had returned the preceding day, but it was the
Spanish embassy: and it had returned, not to Mequiñez, but to
Cordova. And ere his master’s mandate had stricken terror to the
soul of the Hadj Abdallah, the Spanish bells were chiming for the
wedding of a Moorish maiden, now a Christian bride; and the Leila
Ayesha, of Mequiñez, was the wife of the noble Conde De Alarcos:
nor have I ever heard that she rued either of the changes.
Again Muley Abderrahman tore his beard, and this time from the
very roots. But his wonted philosophy still consoled him, and after a
little while he muttered—
“Allah, assist me, that I thought myself so wise—yet know not
the heart of a woman! How should I?”
 WRITE THOU UPON LIFE’S PAGE.
———
BY GRENVILLE GREY.
———

Leave thou some light behind thee,

Some mark upon thine age;
Let not a false fate bind thee—
Write thou upon life’s page,

Some word of earnest meaning,

Some thought, or else some deed,
On which thy brother leaning,
Unto better may succeed.

For none may tell what beauty,

What endless good there lies,
In some little nameless duty,
Whose remembrance never dies.

Leave thou some light behind thee,

Some token of thy way;
Let not a false ease bind thee—
Thou art not wholly clay.

There is something noble in thee,

Let it speak and not be mute;
There is something that should win thee
From a kindred with the brute.
Thou art not, oh! my brother,
Wholly impotent for good;
Thou may’st win or warn another
From the wrongs thou hast withstood.

Leave thou some trace behind thee—

In life’s warfare, go, engage;
Let no more a false fate bind thee—
Write thou upon life’s page.
 LINES ON A VASE OF FLOWERS,
(FOUND UPON MY DESK.)

———
BY ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS.
———

I upon these simple flowers

came
As something I revere;
They grew in Love’s enchanted bowers—
And love hath placed them here.

I kiss their cheeks of virgin bloom,

I press their dewy lips,
While my wrapt soul of their perfume,
Inebriated sips.

I look into their violet eyes,

And feel my heart grow calm,
And fancy I’m in Paradise,
Inhaling Eden’s balm.

There in ecstatic dreams I rove

Among celestial bowers,
Weaving a garland for my Love,
Of beatific flowers.
 DEATH.[7]
———
BY SAMUEL HENRY DICKSON, M. D.; PROFESSOR IN THE MEDICAL
COLLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
———

As the word Life is employed in a double sense to denote the

actions or phenomena by which it is developed, and the cause of
these phenomena, so the old English word Death is used familiarly
to express two or more meanings. The first of these is the transition
from the living to the lifeless or inanimate state—the act, that is, of
dying; the second, the condition of an organized body which has
ceased to live, while organization yet remains, and symmetry still
displays itself, and the admirable structure of its parts is not yet
destroyed by decomposition, or resolved into the original and
primary elements from which it was moulded,

“Before Decay’s effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

We occasionally speak of “dead matter” in the sense of inorganic;

but this is merely a rhetorical or metaphorical phrase. That which
has never lived cannot properly be said to be dead.
In the following essay, I shall use the word chiefly in the first of
the senses above indicated. It will often be convenient to employ it
in the second also; but in doing so, I will be careful so to designate
its bearing as to avoid any confusion. The context will always
prevent any misunderstanding on this point.
Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and
psychologically. We are obliged to regard it and speak of it as the
uniform correlative, and indeed the necessary consequence, or final
result of life; the act of dying as the rounding off, or termination of
the act of living. But it ought to be remarked that this conclusion is
derived, not from any understanding or comprehension of the
relevancy of the asserted connection, nor from any à priori reasoning
applicable to the inquiry, but merely à posteriori as the result of
universal experience. All that has lived has died; and, therefore, all
that lives must die.
The solid rock on which we tread, and with which we rear our
palaces and temples, what is it often when microscopically
examined, but a congeries of the fossil remains of innumerable
animal tribes! The soil from which, by tillage, we derive our
vegetable food, is scarcely any thing more than a mere mixture of
the decayed and decaying fragments of former organic being; the
shells and exuviæ, the skeletons and fibres and exsiccated juices of
extinct life.
The earth itself, in its whole habitable surface, is little else than
the mighty sepulchre of the past; and

“All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet, the dead are there;
And millions in these solitudes, since first
The flight of years begun, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone.”

Four millions of Egyptians cultivate the valley of the great river

on whose banks, amidst the fertilizing dust of myriads of their
progenitors, there are calculated still to exist, in a state of
preservation, not less than from four hundred to five hundred
millions of mummies. The “City of the Tombs” is far more populous
than the neighboring streets even of crowded Constantinople; and
the cemeteries of London and the catacombs of Paris are filled to
overflowing. The trees which gave shade to our predecessors of a
few generations back lie prostrate; and the dog and horse, the
playmate and the servant of our childhood, are but dust. Death
surrounds and sustains us. We derive our nourishment from the
destruction of living organisms, and from this source alone.
And who is there among us that has reached the middle term of
existence, that may not, in the touching phrase of Carlyle, “measure
the various stages of his life-journey by the white tombs of his
beloved ones, rising in the distance like pale, mournfully receding
milestones?”
“When Wilkie was in the Escurial,” says Southey, “looking at
Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper in the refectory there, an
old Jeronymite monk said to him, ‘I have sat daily in sight of that
picture for now nearly threescore years; during that time my
companions have dropped off one after another—all who were my
seniors, all who were my cotemporaries, and many or most of those
who were younger than myself; more than one generation has
passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained
unchanged. I look at them, till I sometimes think that they are the
realities, and we but shadows.’ ”
I have stated that there is no reason known to us why Death
should always “round the sum of life.” Up to a certain point of their
duration, varying in each separate set of instances, and in the
comparison of extremes varying prodigiously, the vegetable and
animal organisms not only sustain themselves, but expand and
develop themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and better
life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it that at this period all
progress is completely arrested; that thenceforward they waste,
deteriorate and fail? Why should they thus decline and decay with
unerring uniformity upon their attaining their highest perfection,
their most intense activity? This ultimate law is equally mysterious
and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writings tell us of Enoch,
“whom God took and he was not;” and of Elijah, who was
transported through the upper air in a chariot of fire; and of
Melchisedek, the most extraordinary personage whose name is
recorded, “without father, without mother, without descent: having
neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” We read the history
without conceiving the faintest hope from these exceptions to the
universal rule. Yet our fancy has always exulted in visionary evasions
of it, by forging for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth
and beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, amidst the
fruition of perpetual vigor. We would drink, in imagination, of the
sparkling fountain of rejuvenescence; nay, boldly dare the terror of
Medea’s caldron. We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation
of the expiring Wolcott, “Bring back my youth!”
Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our ruthless
destiny. There is another law of our being, not less unrelenting,
whose yoke is even harsher and more intolerable, from whose
pressure Death alone can relieve us, and in comparison with which
the absolute certainty of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of
whatever else we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself,
comes to feel, realize and know unequivocally that all his capacities,
both of action and enjoyment, are transient and tend to pass away;
and when our thirst is satiated, we turn disgusted from the bitter
lees of the once fragrant and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell’s
offered analogy—

“The tree of deepest root is found

Unwilling most to leave the ground;”

and of Rush’s notion, who imputes to the aged such an augmenting

love of life that he is at a loss to account for it, and suggests,
quaintly enough, that it may depend upon custom, the great
moulder of our desires and propensities; and that the infirm and
decrepit “love to live on because they have acquired a habit of
living.” His assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of the
important principle that Old Age is a relative term, and that one man
may be more superannuated, farther advanced in natural decay at
sixty, than another at one hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at
being alive, and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one
hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of the
enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has had his “three
sufficient warnings,” who is deaf, lame and blind; who, like the monk
of the Escurial, has lost all his cotemporaries, and is condemned to
hopeless solitude, and oppressed with the consciousness of
dependence and imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a
refuge. Of one hundred and thirty-three suicides occurring in Geneva
from 1825 to 1834, more than half were above fifty years of age;
thirty-four, from fifty to sixty; nineteen, from sixty to seventy; nine,
from seventy to eighty; three, from eighty to ninety; in all sixty-five.
The mean term of life in that city being about thirty-five to forty, this
bears an immense proportion to the actual population above fifty,
and exhibits forcibly an opposite condition of feeling to that alleged
by Rush, a weariness of living, a desire to die, rather than an
anxiety, or even willingness to live.
I once knew an old man of about one hundred and four who
retained many of his faculties. He could read ordinary print without
glasses, walked firmly, rode well, and could even leap with some
agility. When I last parted with him, I wished him twenty years
more; upon which he grasped my hand closely, and declared he
would not let me go until I had retracted or reversed the prayer.
Strolling with my venerable and esteemed colleague, Prof.
Stephen Elliott, one afternoon, through a field on the banks of the
river Ashley, we came upon a negro basking in the sun, the most
ancient-looking personage I have ever seen. Our attempts, with his
aid, to calculate his age, were of course conjectural; but we were
satisfied that he was far above one hundred. Bald, toothless, nearly
blind, bent almost horizontally, and scarcely capable of locomotion,
he was absolutely alone in the world, living by permission upon a
place, from which the generation to which his master and fellow-
servants belonged had long since disappeared. He expressed many
an earnest wish for death, and declared, emphatically, that he “was
afraid God Almighty had forgotten him.”
We cannot wonder, then, that the ancients should believe,
“Whom the gods love, die young,” and are ready to say with
Southey, himself, subsequently, like poor Swift, a melancholy
example of the truth of his poetical exclamation,
 “They who reach
Gray hairs die piecemeal.”

Sacred history informs us that, in the infancy of the world, the

physiological tendency to death was far less urgently and early
developed than it is now. When the change took place is not stated;
if it occurred gradually, the downward progress has been long since
arrested. All records make the journey of life from the time of Job
and the early patriarchs, much the same as the pilgrim of to-day is
destined to travel. Threescore and ten was, when Cheops built his
pyramid, as it is now, a long life. Legends, antique and modern, do
indeed tell us of tribes that, like Riley’s Arabs and the serfs of Middle
Russia, and the Ashantees and other Africans, live two or three
centuries, but these are travelers’ stories, unconfirmed. The various
statistical tables that have been in modern times made up from
materials more or less authentic, and the several inquiries into the
general subject of longevity, seem to lead to the gratifying
conclusion that there is rather an increase of the average or mean
duration of civilized life. In 1806, Duvillard fixed the average
duration of life in France at twenty-eight years; in 1846, Bousquet
estimates it at thirty-three. Mallet calculated that the average life of
the Genevese had extended ten years in three generations. In Farr’s
fifth report (for 1844), the “probable duration,” the “expectation of
life” in England, is placed above forty; a great improvement within
half a century. It is curious, if it be true, that the extreme term
seems to lessen as the average thus increases. Mallet is led to this
opinion from the fact, among others, that in Geneva, coincident with
the generally favorable change above mentioned, there has not been
a single centenarian within twenty-seven years; such instances of
longevity having been formerly no rarer there than elsewhere.
Birds and fishes are said to be the longest lived of animals. For
the longevity of the latter, ascertained in fish-ponds, Bacon gives the
whimsical reason that, in the moist element which surrounds them,
they are protected from exsiccation of the vital juices, and thus
preserved. This idea corresponds very well with the stories told of
the uncalculated ages of some of the inhabitants of the bayous of
Louisiana, and of the happy ignorance of that region, where a
traveler once found a withered and antique corpse—so goes the tale
—sitting propped in an arm-chair among his posterity, who could not
comprehend why he slept so long and so soundly.
But the Hollanders and Burmese do not live especially long; and
the Arab, always lean and wiry, leads a protracted life amidst his arid
sands. Nor can we thus account for the lengthened age of the crow,
the raven, and the eagle, which are affirmed to hold out for two or
three centuries.
There is the same difference among shrubs and trees, of which
some are annual, some of still more brief existence, and some
almost eternal. The venerable oak bids defiance to the storms of a
thousand winters; and the Indian baobab is set down as a
contemporary at least of the Tower of Babel, having probably
braved, like the more transient, though long-enduring olive, the very
waters of the great deluge.
It will be delightful to know—will Science ever discover for us?—
what constitutes the difference thus impressed upon the long and
short-lived races of the organized creation. Why must the fragrant
shrub or gorgeous flower-plant die immediately after performing its
function of continuing the species, and the pretty ephemeron
languish into non-existence just as it flutters through its genial hour
of love, and grace, and enjoyment; while the banyan, and the
chestnut, the tortoise, the vulture, and the carp, formed of the same
primary material elements, and subsisting upon the very same
resources of nutrition and supply, outlast them so indefinitely?
Death from old age, from natural decay—usually spoken of as
death without disease—is most improperly termed by writers an
euthanasia. Alas! how far otherwise is the truth! Old age itself is,
with the rarest exceptions, exceptions which I have never had the
good fortune to meet with anywhere—old age itself is a protracted
and terrible disease.
 During its whole progress, Death is making gradual
encroachments upon the domain of life. Function after function
undergoes impairment, and is less and less perfectly carried on,
while organ after organ suffers atrophy and other changes, unfitting
it for the performance of offices to which it was originally designed. I
will not go over the gloomy detail of the observed modifications
occurring in every part of the frame, now a noble ruin, majestic even
in decay. The lungs admit and vivify less blood; the heart often
diminishes in size and always acts more slowly, and the arteries
frequently ossify; nutrition is impeded and assimilation deteriorated;
senile marasmus follows, “and the seventh age falls into the lean
and slippered pantaloon;” and, last and worst of all, the brain and
indeed the whole nervous tissue shrink in size and weight,
undergoing at the same time more or less change of structure and
composition. As the skull cannot contract on its contents, the
shrinking of the brain occasions a great increase of the fluid within
the subarachnoid space. Communication with the outer world, now
about to be cut off entirely, becomes limited and less intimate. The
eyes grow dim; the ear loses its aptitude for harmony, and soon
ceases to appreciate sound; odors yield no fragrance; flavors affect
not the indifferent palate; and even the touch appreciates only harsh
and coarse impressions. The locomotive power is lost; the capillaries
refuse to circulate the dark, thick blood; the extremities retain no
longer their vital warmth; the breathing slow and oppressed, more
and more difficult, at last terminates forever with a deep expiration.
This tedious process is rarely accomplished in the manner indicated
without interruption; it is usually, nay, as far as my experience has
gone, always brought to an abrupt close by the supervention of
some positive malady. In our climate, this is, in the larger proportion,
an affection of the respiratory apparatus, bronchitis, or pulmonitis. It
will, of course, vary with the original or constitutional predisposition
of the individual, and somewhat in relation to locality and season.
Many aged persons die of apoplexy and its kindred cerebral
maladies, not a few of diarrhœa; a winter epidemic of influenza is
apt to be fatal to them in large numbers everywhere.
 When we regard death pathologically, that is, as the result of
violence and destructive disease, it is evident that the phenomena
presented will vary relatively to the contingencies effective in
producing it. It is obviously out of place here to recount them,
forming as they do a vast collection of instructive facts, the basis
indeed of an almost separate science, Morbid Anatomy.
There are many of the phenomena of death, however, that are
common to all forms and modes of death, or are rarely wanting;
these are highly interesting objects of study in themselves, and
assume a still greater importance when we consider them in the
light of signs or tokens of the extinction of life. It seems strange that
it has been found difficult to agree upon any such signs short of
molecular change or putrefactive decomposition, that shall be
pronounced absolutely certain, and calculated entirely to relieve us
from the horrible chance of premature interment of a body yet
living. The flaccidity of the cornea is dwelt on by some; others trust
rather to the rigor mortis, the rigid stiffness of the limbs and trunk
supervening upon the cold relaxation which attends generally the
last moments. This rigidity is not understood or explained
satisfactorily. It is possible that, as Matteucci has proved, the
changes in all the tissues, chiefly chemical or chemico-vital, are the
source from whence is generated the “nervous force” during life; so,
after death, the similar changes, now purely chemical, may, for a
brief period, continue to generate the same or a similar force, which
is destined to expend itself simply upon the muscular fibres in
disposing them to contract. There is a vague analogy here with the
effect of galvanism upon bodies recently dead, which derives some
little force from the fact that the bodies least disposed to respond to
the stimulus of galvanism are those which form the exceptions to the
almost universal exhibition of rigidity—those, namely, which have
been killed by lightning, and by blows on the pit of the stomach.
Some poisons, too, leave the corpse quite flaccid and flexible.
The researches of Dr. Bennett Dowler, of New Orleans, have
presented us with results profoundly impressive, startling, and
instructive. He has, with almost unequalled zeal, availed himself of
opportunities of performing autopsy at a period following death of
unprecedented promptness, that is, within a few minutes after the
last struggle, and employed them with an intelligent curiosity and to
admirable purpose.
I have said that, in physiological death, the natural decay of
advancing age, there is a gradual encroachment of death upon life;
so here, in premature death from violent diseases, the contrasted
analogy is offered of life maintaining its ground far amidst the
destructive changes of death. Thus, in cholera asphyxia, the body,
for an indefinite period after all other signs of life have ceased, is
agitated by horrid spasms, and violently contorted. We learn from
Dr. Dowler that it is not only in these frightful manifestations, and in
the cold stiffness of the familiar rigor mortis, that we are to trace
this tenacious muscular contraction as the last vital sign, but that in
all, or almost all cases we shall find it lingering, not in the heart,
anciently considered in its right ventricle the ultimum moriens, nor in
any other internal fibres, but in the muscles of the limbs, the biceps
most obstinately. This muscle will contract, even after the arm with
the scapula has been torn from the trunk, upon receiving a sharp
blow, so as to raise the forearm from the table, to a right angle with
the upper arm.
We also learn from him the curious fact that the generation of
animal heat, which physiologists have chosen to point out as a
function most purely vital, does not cease upon the supervention of
obvious or apparent death. There is, he tells us, a steady
development for some time of what he terms “post-mortem
caloricity,” by which the heat is carried not only above the natural or
normal standard, but to a height rarely equalled in the most sthenic
or inflammatory forms of disease. He has seen it reach 113° of Fahr.,
higher than Hunter ever met with it, in his experiments made for the
purpose of exciting it; higher than it has been noted even in
scarlatina, 112°, I think, being the ultimate limit observed in that
disease of pungent external heat; and far beyond the natural heat of
the central parts of the healthy body, which is 97° or 98°. Nor is it
near the centre, or at the trunk, that the post-mortem warmth is
greatest, but, for some unknown reason, at the inner part of the
thigh, about the lower margin of its upper third. I scarcely know any
fact in nature more incomprehensible or inexplicable than this. We
were surprised when it was first told us that, in the Asiatic
pestilence, the body of the livid victim was often colder before than
after death; but this, I think, is easily understood. The profluvia of
cholera, and its profound capillary stagnation, concur in carrying off
all the heat generated, and in preventing or impeding the
development of animal heat. No vital actions, no changes necessary
to the production of caloric, can proceed without the minute
circulation which has been checked by the asphyxiated condition of
the subject, while the fluids leave the body through every outlet, and
evaporation chills the whole exposed and relaxed surface. Yet the
lingering influence of a scarcely perceptible vitality prevents the
purely chemical changes of putrefactive decomposition, which
commence instantly upon the extinction of this feeble resistance,
and caloric is evolved by the processes of ordinary delay.
In the admirable liturgy of the churches of England and of Rome,
there is a fervent prayer for protection against “battle, murder, and
sudden death.” From death uncontemplated, unarranged,
unprepared for, may Heaven in mercy deliver us! But if ever ready,
as we should be for the inevitable event, the most kindly mode of
infliction must surely be that which is most prompt and brief. To die
unconsciously, as in sleep, or by apoplexy, or lightning, or
overwhelming violence, as in the catastrophe of the Princeton, this is
the true Euthanasia. “Cæsar,” says Suetonius, “finem vitæ
commodissimum, repentinum inopinatumque pretulerat.” Montaigne,
who quotes this, renders it, “La moins préméditée et la plus courte.”
“Mortes repentinæ,” reasons Pliny, “hoc est summa vitæ felicitas.”
“Emori nolo,” exclaims Cicero, “sed me esse mortuum nihil estimo.”
Sufferers by various modes of execution were often, in the good
old times of our merciless ancestors, denied as long as possible the
privilege of dying, and the Indians of our continent utter a fiendish
howl of disappointment when a victim thus prematurely escapes
from their ingenious malignity. The coup de grace was a boon
unspeakably desired by the poor wretch broken on the wheel, or
stretched upon the accursed cross, and forced to linger on with
mangled and bleeding limbs, amidst all the cruel torments of thirst
and fever, through hours and even days that must have seemed
interminable.
The progress of civilization, and a more enlightened humanity
have put an end to all these atrocities, and substituted the gallows,
the garrote, and the guillotine, which inflict deaths so sudden that
many have questioned whether they necessarily imply any
consciousness of physical suffering. These are, however, by no
means the most instantaneous modes of putting an end to life and
its manifestations. In the hanged, as in the drowned, and otherwise
suffocated, there is a period of uncertainty, during which the subject
is, as we know, recoverable; we dare not pronounce him insensible.
He who has seen an ox “pithed” in the slaughter-house, or a game-
cock in all the flush and excitement of battle “gaffed” in the occiput
or back of the neck, will contrast the immediate stiffness and
relaxation of the flaccid body with the prolonged and convulsive
struggles of the decapitated bird, with a sort of curious anxiety to
know how long and in what degree sensibility may linger in the head
and in the trunk when severed by the sharp axe. The history of the
guillotine offers many incidents calculated to throw a doubt on the
subject, and the inquiries of Seguret and Sue seem to prove the
existence of post-mortem passion and emotion.
Among the promptest modes of extinguishing life is the electric
fluid. A flash of lightning will destroy the coagulability of the blood,
as well as the contractility of the muscular fibre; the dead body
remaining flexible. A blow on the epigastrium kills instantly with the
same results. Soldiers fall sometimes in battle without a wound; the
impulse of a cannon-ball passing near the pit of the stomach is here
supposed to be the cause of death. The effect in these two last
instances is ascribed by some to “a shock given to the semilunar
ganglion, and the communication of the impression to the heart;”
but this is insufficient to account either for the quickness of the
occurrence, or the peculiar changes impressed upon the solids and
fluids. Others are of opinion that the whole set of respiratory nerves
is paralyzed through the violent shock given to the phrenic, “thus
shutting up,” as one writer expresses it, “the fountain of all the
sympathetic actions of the system.” This hypothesis is liable also to
the objections urged above; and we must acknowledge the
suddenness and character of the results described to be as yet
unexplained, and in the present state of our knowledge inexplicable.
On the field of battle, it has been observed that the
countenances of those killed by gun-shot wounds are usually placid,
while those who perish by the sword, bayonet, pike, or lance, offer
visages distorted by pain, or by emotions of anger or impatience.
Poisons differ much among themselves as to the amount and kind of
suffering they occasion. We know of none which are absolutely free
from the risk of inflicting severe distress. Prussic acid gives perhaps
the briefest death which we have occasion to observe. I have seen
it, as Taylor states, kill an animal, when applied to the tongue or the
eye, almost before the hand which offered it could be removed. Yet
in the case of Tawell, tried for the murder of Sarah Hart, by this
means, there was abundant testimony that many, on taking it, had
time to utter a loud and peculiar scream of anguish: and in a
successful attempt at suicide made by a physician of New York city,
we have a history of appalling suffering and violent convulsion. So I
have seen in suicide with opium, which generally gives an easy and
soporose death resembling that of apoplexy, one or two instances in
which there were very great and long-protracted pain and sickness.
Medical writers have agreed, very generally, that “the death-
struggle,” “the agony of death,” as it has long been termed is not
what it appears, a stage of suffering. I am not satisfied—I say it
reluctantly—I am not satisfied with these consolatory views, so
ingeniously and plausibly advocated by Wilson Philip, and Symonds,
Hufeland and Hoffman. I would they were true! But all the
symptoms look like tokens or expressions of distress; we may hope
that they are not always such in reality: but how can this be proved?
Those who, having seemed to die, recovered afterward and declared
that they had undergone no pain, do not convince me of the fact
any more than the somnambulist, who upon awaking, assures me
that he has not dreamed at all, after a whole night of action, and
connected thought and effected purpose. His memory retains no
traces of the questionable past; like that of the epileptic, who forgets
the whole train of events, and is astonished after a horrible fit to find
his tongue bitten, and his face and limbs bruised and swollen.
Nay, some have proceeded to the paradoxical extreme of
suggesting that certain modes of death are attended with
pleasurable sensations, as for instance, hanging; and a late reviewer,
who regards this sombre topic with a most cheerful eye, gives us
instances which he considers in point. I have seen many men hung,
forty at least, a strangely large number. In all, there were evidences
of suffering, as far as could be judged by external appearances. It
once happened that a certain set were slowly executed, owing to a
maladroit arrangement of the scaffold upon which they stood, which
gave way only at one end. The struggles of such as were half
supported were dreadful, and those of them who could speak
earnestly begged that their agonies should be put an end to.
In former, nay, even in recent times, we are told that pirates and
robbers have resorted to half-hanging, to extort confession as to
hidden treasure. Is it possible that they can have so much mistaken
the means they employ as thus to use pleasurable appliances for the
purposes of torture?
The mistake of most reasoners on the subject, Winslow and
Hufeland more especially, consists in this, that they fix their attention
exclusively upon the final moments of dissolution. But the act of
dying may be in disease, as we know it to be in many modes of
violence, impalement, for example, or crucifixion, very variously
protracted and progressive. “Insensibly as we enter life,” says
Hufeland, “equally insensibly do we leave it. Man can have no
sensation of dying.” Here the insensibility of death completed, that
is, of the dead body, is strangely predicated of the moribund while
still living. This transitive condition, to use the graphic language of
the Southern writer whom we have already more than once quoted,
is “a terra incognita, where vitality, extinguished in some tissues,
smouldering in others, and disappearing gradually from all,
resembles the region of a volcano, whose eruptions subsiding, leave
the surface covered with cinders and ashes, concealing the rents and
lesions which have on all sides scarred and disfigured the face of
nature.”
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.
There are doubtless instances of death entirely easy. “I wish,”
said Doctor Black, “I could hold a pen; I would write how pleasant a
thing it is to die.” Dr. George Fordyce desired his youngest daughter
to read to him. When she had been reading some time, he called to
her—“Stop; go out of the room; I am going to die.” She left him, and
an attendant, entering immediately, found him dead. “Is it possible I
am dying?” exclaimed a lady patient of mine; “I feel as if going into
a sweet sleep.” “I am drowsy, had I better indulge myself?” asked
Capt. G. On my giving him an affirmative answer, he turned, and
sank into a slumber from which he awoke no more. It is indeed
pleasant to know that examples occur of this unconscious and
painless dissolution; but I fear they are comparatively rare
exceptions to a natural rule; and I regard it as the duty of the
medical profession to add to the number by the judicious
employment of every means in our power.
And this leads me to a brief consideration of the question so
often pressed upon us in one shape or another by the friends of our
patients, and sometimes by our patients themselves: If the tendency
of any medicinal or palliative agent be to shorten life, while it
assuages pain, has the physician a right to resort to it? Even in the
latter stages of some inflammatory affections, loss of blood,
especially if carried to fainting, will arrest the sharp pangs, but the
patient will probably die somewhat sooner: shall we bleed him?
Large doses of opium will tranquilize him, or render him insensible;
but he will probably sink somewhat earlier into the stupor of death.
Shall we administer it, or shall we let him linger on in pain, merely
that he may linger? Chloroform, ether, and other anæsthetics in full
dose inspired render us insensible to all forms of anguish, and make
death as easy, to use the phrase of Hufeland, as being born! Shall
we allow our agonized moribund to inhale them? Used in less
amount, a degree of relief and palliation is procured, but at the risk
of exhausting or prostrating more promptly the failing energies of
the system. Shall we avail ourselves of their anæsthetic influences,
or are they forbidden us, either absolutely or partially?
These are by some moralists considered very delicate questions
in ethics. Desgenettes has been highly applauded for the reply he
made to Bonaparte’s suggestion, that it would be better for the
miserable sick left by the French army at Jaffa to be drugged with
opium: “It is my business to save life, not to destroy it.” But, in
approving the physician, we must not harshly condemn the
commanding officer. When we reflect on the condition of the men
whom the fortune of war compelled him to abandon, and the
certainty of a horrible death to each victim from wasting disease or
Turkish cruelty, a rational philanthropist might well desire to smooth
their passage to the grave.
During the employment of torture for the purposes of tyranny in
Church and State, a physician or surgeon was at hand, whose whole
duty it was to suspend the process whenever it became probable
that nature would yield under its pressure, and the victim would
escape through the opening, glad gates of death. It was then
esteemed an act of mercy to give, or permit to be given by the
executioner, a fatal blow, hence called emphatically and justly the
coup de grace. In the terrible history of the invasion of Russia by
Napoleon, we shudder to read that, after their expulsion from
Moscow, the French soldiers, in repassing the fields of battles fought
days and even weeks previously, found many of their comrades,
there wounded and left, still dragging out a wretched and hopeless
existence, amidst the corpses of those more fortunately slain
outright, and perishing miserably and slowly of cold and hunger, and
festering and gangrenous wounds. One need not surely offer a
single argument to prove, all must feel and admit that the kindest
office of humanity, under the circumstances, would have been to put
an end to this indescribable mass of protracted wretchedness by the
promptest means that could be used to extinguish so horrible a life.
A common case presents itself from time to time to every
practitioner, in which all hope is avowedly extinct, and yet, in
consonance with uniform custom, stimulants are assiduously
prescribed to prolong existence in the midst of convulsive and
delirious throes, not to be looked on without dismay. In some such
contingencies, where the ultimate result was palpably certain, I have
seen them at last abandoned as useless and worse, in order that
nature, irritated and excited, lashed into factitious and transitory
energy, might sink into repose; and have felt a melancholy
satisfaction in witnessing the tranquillity, so soft and gentle, that
soon ensued; the stormy agitation subsiding into a calm and
peaceful decay.
Responsibility of the kind I am contemplating, often indeed more
obvious and definite, presses upon the obstetrician, and is met
unreservedly. In embryulcia, one life is sacrificed in the hope and
with the reasonable prospect of saving another more valued: this is
done too sometimes where there is an alternative presented, the
Cæsarian section, which destroys neither of absolute necessity, but
subjects the better life to very great risk.
 Patients themselves frequently prefer the prompter and more
lenient motives of death which our science refuses to inflict. In
summing up the motives of suicide in one hundred and thirty-one
cases, whose causes are supposed to be known, Prevost tells us that
thirty-four, more than one-fourth of the whole number, committed
self-murder to rid themselves of the oppressive burden of physical
disease. Winslow gives us an analysis of thirteen hundred and thirty-
three suicides from Pinel, Esquirol, Burrows, and others. Of these,
there were but two hundred and fifty that did not present obvious
appearances of bodily ailment; and although it is not stated how
many of them sought death voluntarily as a refuge from physical
suffering, it would be unreasonable to doubt that this was the
purpose with a very large proportion. I am far from advocating the
propriety of yielding to this desire or gratifying the propensity; nay, I
would, on the other hand, earnestly endeavor to remove or repress
it, as is now the admitted rule.
I hold fully, with Pascal, that, according to the principles of
Christianity, which in this entirely oppose the false notions of
paganism, a man “does not possess power over his own life.” I
acknowledge and maintain that the obligation to perform
unceasingly, and to the last and utmost of our ability, all the duties
which appertain to our condition, renders absolutely incompatible
the right supposed by some to belong to every one to dispose of
himself at his own will. But I would present the question for the
serious consideration of the profession, whether there does not, now
and then, though very rarely, occur an exceptional case, in which
they might, upon full and frank consultation, be justified before God
and man in relieving, by the efficient use of anæsthetics, at
whatever risk, the ineffable and incurable anguish of a fellow-
creature laboring under disease of organic destructiveness, or
inevitably mortal; such, for example, as we are doomed to witness in
hydrophobia, and even more clearly in some instances of cancerous
and fungoid degeneration, and in the sphacelation of organs
necessary to life, or parts so connected as to be indispensable, yet
not allowing either of removal or restoration?
 I have left myself scarcely time for a few remarks upon death,
psychologically considered. How is the mind affected by the
anticipation and actual approach of death? The answer will obviously
depend upon and be influenced by a great diversity of contingencies,
moral and physical. The love of life is an instinct implanted in us for
wise purposes; so is the fear of pain. Apart from this, I do not
believe, as many teach, that there is any instinctive fear of death.
Education, which instills into us, when young, the fear of spectres;
religious doctrines, which awake in us the terror of “something after
death;” conscience, which, when instructed, “makes cowards of us
all;” associations of a revolting character—
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