Extracts from various authors, and fragments of table-talk, afternoons at L*********.

  • Hussey E. L. (Edward Law), 1816-1899.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extracts from various authors, and fragments of table-talk, afternoons at L*********. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ‘ How do you feel, Sir ? ’ — ‘ That I am dead to all intents and purposes.’ £ Are you in pain, Sir?’ — ‘None.’ ‘Then what do you feel, Sir?’ — ‘ I feel that I have lived more than ninety years, and that life is exhausted.’ — The Doctor told the patient’s family, ‘ I have seen many persons die ; but not many at ninety : I wished to know what death by age is like.’— * * * * ‘It is harder to come back than to depart/ said the Patient, when he awoke from a short sleep, — the result, as he supposed, of the Doctor’s medicine. — ‘ I wish he had left me alone.’ To die piece-meal carries with it a frightful sound, until we learn by observation that of all destroyers time is the gentlest. — Quart. Rev., Vol. 85. 353. If it were possible to choose a mode of death from natural causes, I would choose that mode which spared my intellect to the last, — wrote my friend, Mr. L * * * * *, upon the death of a co-trustee who had long been disabled. — May 1872. When our powers of active usefulness fail, — which not seldom happens,— there still remains that last, that highest, that most difficult, and, perhaps, most acceptable, duty to our Creator, resignation to his blessed will in the privations and pains, and afflictions with which we are visited ; thankfulness to him for all that is spared to us, amid much that is gone ; for any mitigation of our sufferings, any degree of ease, and comfort, and