Medicine: Kindly Murder

The moral problem which every community faces—whether or not to kill off in all kindness its incurably diseased members—was dramatized for Germany last week by the Reverend Walter Nithack-Stahn, pastor of the fashionable Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Pastor Nithack-Stahn knows of the skeletons in his congregation's closets. He knows too that the incidence of mental diseases have been increasing tremendously in all civilized countries, that in Germany, especially, post-War maladjustments have permanently deranged the minds of thousands. An astute gentleman alert to the wide interest in the subject, he wrote a play, The Mother, which was produced last week at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder.

The mother in this play poisons her daughter who is violently, permanently insane. "I have killed her," she stubbornly cries, although the mummer jury considers the murder kindly and exonerates her of crime. Then she enters a sanatorium to nurse the psychopathic children of other people towards a semblance of sanity.

German doctors discreetly remained silent. They know too well the legal, religious and ethical taboos of all countries against taking life. When absolutely helpless against disease, they might let the patient die (easing his pain with drugs if necessary). But to give him a lethal dose. ...