Reviewed by Richard Tutin
All humans know that at some point we will die and no longer walk this earth. This does not mean that we go around ready to embrace it. It is more the opposite. We spend a lot of time trying to avoid it as much as possible. Then comes the time when death is a very real possibility due to illness, old age or severe injury.
The question we ask is how will we die? Will it be painless? Will it be easy? Will we suffer too much? Caitlin Mahar takes us on a small excursion into history to assist in answering the question of what constitutes a good death. As she says, death and dying can be very complex both to explain and to experience. Everyone’s experience is unique to them.
We have grown accustomed in the modern age to think of the word ‘euthanasia’ as being related to what we now call ‘voluntary assisted dying’. Euthanasia used to mean a death blessed by God that might include pain. In earlier times pain was seen as being redemptive. Through their pain the dying person could find redemption before the time came when they took their last breath and, as was thought for centuries, began the journey of being admitted into God’s presence. The presence of clergy or spiritual leaders was a necessary component in this process. Medical intervention was seen as being not required.
Mahar points out that two epochs of history changed this time-honoured understanding. First the Victorian age saw the development of painkillers that could assist in relieving the suffering. Dying without pain was regarded as more preferable so the doctor and nursing staff replaced the clergy and spiritual leaders as the front-line carers. This pushed the spiritual dimension of death further into the background to be used as needed by the patient and their family.
The second epoch was World War II. During the inter-war period of the 1930s, politicians, clergy and others carefully worked through the concept of assisting the death of a very sick or injured person through the used of medication. This was especially true for those cases where the patient did not have long to live and was in great pain due to the nature of their condition. This work included preparing legislation and explain their thinking to the general public in order to get their support.
World War II though saw the use of euthanasia taken to its extremes when the Nazis began to systematically kill millions of Jews as well as those with disabilities and people of other races that did not fit the model of the perfect Aryan race that Hitler desired.
Though discussion about euthanasia has been revived and appropriate legislation has been enacted through the late twentieth and into the twenty-first century it remains, as Mahar shows, a western European concept. Australian indigenous nations do not subscribe to it and wonder why it has become so popular among white Australians.
Mahar does not give any clear direction about what constitutes a good death. She does though show that the complexity of the topic indicates that what constitutes a good death is what society and individuals feel meets their wishes. Hence the need to show respect and understanding of the diverse views of patients, their families, medical staff and spiritual leaders on this sensitive and emotional topic.
Caitlin Mahar lectures in history at Swinburne University of Technology. She completed a PhD in history at the University of Melbourne in 2016 and was awarded the Society for Social History of Medicine Roy Porter Essay Prize, the Australian and New Zealand Society for the History of Medicine Ben Haneman Memorial Award and the University of Melbourne’s Dennis-Wettenhall Prize.
The Good Death Through Time
by Caitlin Mahar
(2023)
MUP
ISBN: 978 052287 812 7
$35.00; 215pp