Palliative

“ It is, however, permissible, after having legitimately excused one's self, to prescribe a palliative treatment. In diseases easy to cure, in recent small wounds—for example, boils, tumors, slight contusions, etc.—we may give a curative prescription to absent persons. We should laugh indeed at surgeons," he adds, "if the patient had to appear personally before them for a light disease as well as for a serious one. ”

“ The disorder assumes a very obstinate character in this country; for though cured in the dry season, it generally presents itself again at the period of the rain,—a circumstance very easily explained, if we consider that the cure, what with their inacquaintance with the nature of the disease, and defective treatment, is generally palliative, or temporary, and never radical; hence many of these patients remain cripples for life. ”

“ My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labours in our provincial districts. ”

“ In Tuesday last he confessed to witness that he had shot himself four times through the chest, and expressed the fear that he had made a bad job of it. He died the following Saturday.
A letter fro the deceased to his brother read as follows: "I have a malignant disease. A sanatorium cure to me would be intolerable. All medical skill can do is at best, palliative. I have been suffering much pain and discomfort. The future must be all pain and sickness, and I should be a burden to myself and nuisance to everybody else. The best thing is to hasten the end. ”

“ Hospice physicians, nurses, counselors, and volunteers focus on making patients as comfortable as possible, while allowing patients to remain at home and close to their families. With comprehensive assistance, these caregivers help control pain and other symptoms and provide emotional and spiritual support to both patient and family. In 2002, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, an estimated 885,000 individuals were admitted to one of the over 3,000 hospice programs in the United States. ”

“ If he deals only with palliatives, to assuage for a brief period the present suffering, when he can remove the cause, and restore the patient to permanent and perfect health, he is but a quack and an impostor. ”

“ The more deserted you feel, the more you will stir up all healing power in yourself, and in proportion as you derive little or no benefit from temporary and deceptive palliatives, the more certainly will you succeed in eradicating the evil fundamentally. ”

“ Believing, or even perhaps knowing, that to the incurably wounded man palliatives are of no lasting avail, he had deliberately fled from them, and gone among those who had no reason to bother about him. ”

“ Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one. I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty comfortable under it. ”

“ The gravity of the evil calls for a remedy proportioned to it. No slight palliatives or occasional expedients will give the country the relief it needs. Such measures, on the contrary, will in the end, as is now manifest to all, too surely multiply its embarrassments. Relying, as I am bound to do, on the representatives of a people rendered illustrious among nations by having paid off its whole public debt, I shall not shrink from the responsibility imposed upon me by the Constitution of pointing out such measures as will in my opinion insure adequate relief. ”

“ People may say what they please on that subject but hope is in fact nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives. ”

“ Hospice provides a humanitarian way for a terminally ill patient to approach death with dignity, in relative comfort in a supportive atmosphere, and surrounded by family members. Its most important element is concern for patients and their families. Hospice advocates personal care and concern, living comfortably until death, the absence of pain, maintenance of personal control, and the close .fellowship of the family unit. ”

“ When we help those who hurt and those in pain, we become part of our Nation's armies of compassion. Hospice programs provide an option for individuals with terminal illnesses to be cared for as they choose in their final days, often in their own homes and surrounded by the love of their families. The doctors, nurses, counselors, volunteers, and others who provide hospice care throughout our country bring comfort to those most in need every day, treating terminally ill patients with the dignity and respect they deserve. ”

“ But to face death in a great hospital camp such as this! To be all day and half the night visiting the sick and dying where there are no comforts, very little food, and the medicine has run short; to see that hospital steadily grow,—men on the bed-cots, men lying between them; to watch men struggling in the agonies of the disease, with dying men close beside them; to have to step over one prostrate figure to get to the side of some dying man and whisper words of comfort and prayer, while shrieks of agony come from either side ”

“ They bore their sufferings with heroic fortitude, closing their white lips to repress the groans which every breath brought up, and clenching their strong hands in the intensity of mortal pain.
At nine o'clock I was called to hard tack and coffee, feeling the need of it to strengthen me for the work in hand.
We had a patient who occupied a small bed-room alone, whose wound was through the lungs, and mortal. He was young—too young to die away from the kind attentions of mother, and sisters, of whom he talked to me in the lull of his pain. ”

“ Surely no funeral is like unto that of a doctor for pathos, and a peculiar sadness fell on that company as his body was carried out who for nearly half a century had been their help in sickness, and had beaten back death time after time from their door. ”

“ This has nerved the missionary to bid an eternal farewell to home, friends, and kindred, and carried him with a fearless heart into the haunt of the savage, to the shore of the cannibal, and to the land of the relentless and cruel pagan who gloats over the horrible death he makes a Christian die. This it is that gives strength to timid, weak woman to put on the habit of sacrifice, and enter the pestilential wards of the hospital with a cheerful step, and watch through the long and weary night by the bedside of the dying stranger, whose contagious disease carries death to her own brave heart. ”

“ I also had a few people who were beyond help because their vital organs had been so badly damaged that they knew they were dying, and they wanted to die in peace without medical intervention, in a supportive hospice cared for by people who could confront death. ”

“ It was a tragical feeling, a taint or flavour in the mind, such as men often feel in hospitals when many are dying, the sense that Death was at work there, that Death lived there, that Death wandered up and down there and fed on Life. ”

“ Gloom, sadness, and despondency depress the vital forces and lead to death. We have seen patients rapidly sinking, who had given up all hope, and were quietly awaiting the coming of death, snatched, as it were, from its grasp, and restored to health, by words of cheer and encouragement. ”

“ Tears, wailing, heart-rending death-scenes, the smell of carbolic acid, the cracking of the bones of those seized with cramp, the disgusting symptoms, the incessant tolling of the death-bell, the interment—no, the huddling away—of the dead, for in such cases there is no funeral pomp. All the order of life given up ”

“ Why, it must be asked again, should all this unnecessary suffering be endured? The patient desires to die; his life can no longer be of use to others, and has become an intolerable burden to himself; the patient's friends submit to the inevitable, but seek the means of robbing death of its bitterest sting—protracted bodily pain; the medical attendant is at the bedside with all the resources of his knowledge and his skill ready to his hand; he could, were he permitted, bring to his patient immediate and permanent relief. ”

“ In the round basin circled with snows, the ancient hospice—that is no more a hospice, from which its old possessors have been driven away—stands white, beside the white road, in the close-cropped pasture. The sheep and tawny rough cattle were the only things that stirred. The smoke of the hospice chimneys stayed quite motionless in the golden air. ”

“ Do we think enough, as we pass from bed to bed, that we are ourselves partakers of the same mortality, and that in due time we shall be called to take our places in the sick room, and on the bed of death? ”

“ Hospice counselors offer guidance to patients, as well as to those close to them, as they deal with grief, anxiety, and other end-of-life issues. Through these and countless other acts of compassion, our Nation's hospice caregivers lift up souls, offer peace of mind, and strengthen America's culture of life. ”

“ Looking, however, on death in its purely human aspects, the mourner should consider how often in a long illness he wished the dying man could sleep; how consoling to his mind was the thought of every hour of peaceful rest; of every hour in which the patient was withdrawn from consciousness, insensible to suffering, removed for a time from the miseries of a dying life. ”

“ Hospice care plays an important role in American medicine by easing a patient's suffering while reaffirming individual dignity in a familiar, comfortable environment. Across our Nation, hospice care providers are assisting in hospitals, nursing homes, and private residences, offering physical, emotional, and spiritual support to patients who often have a short life expectancy. ”

“ The violence of the paroxysm often tarns the color of the face into a livid purple, the throbbing of the heart becomes spasmodic, but, when the hopes of the sufferer are almost reduced to the supposed euthanasia of strangulation, the rigor suddenly relaxes, a deep gasp fills the lungs to their very bottom, and a few minutes after the breathing becomes quiet and regular, and only a cold perspiration reminds the patient that he has passed through the chill shadow of death. ”

“ Sometimes, alas! the care and nursing lavished upon the sick was unavailing. Death often invaded the "Rest." In every case the rites of burial were accorded. Women remembered tenderly the far-distant mother or wife, and therefore honored their dead.
For a few days after my patient had ceased to need special nursing I continued to serve with, the ladies attached to the little hospital on Clay Street, still longing, however, for a larger sphere of usefulness. ”

“ While we have made great progress in encouraging hospice care, much work remains to be done to increase awareness of hospice and its benefits. The NHPCO reports that in 2000, 2.4 million people in our Nation died. ”

“ Hospice organizations provide people who are near the end of their lives with family-centered, quality care, that emphasizes compassion, independence, respect, and dignity. During National Hospice Month, our Nation pays tribute to hospice care and the persons and organizations involved with it, by recognizing and honoring its value and importance for people who are dying, for their families and friends, and for our communities. ”

“ It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred that people die of old age; die, I mean, without suffering from any disease, or showing any special signs of their condition, such as a struggle, death-rattle, convulsion, pallor,—the absence of all which constitutes euthanasia. The natural length of human life is a hundred years ”

“ The men are fast dying in the hospital, yet they would rather be sent to Patna for some holy oil, than hear the word of eternal life. Two or three of my evening hearers are in the hospital; one is prepared to die: blessed sight! ”