primary act is illicit in itself, and an accidental death follows from this act, the agent may be guilty of homicide, provided the first act in itself is naturally likely to cause homicide. Should the first act be always dangerous, such that death commonly follows from it, like rocking a row-boat, aiming a supposedly unloaded gun at a person and pulling the trigger, striking a pregnant woman, drinking whiskey and then overlying an infant in the bed, throwing building material from a roof to a street, racing an automobile through a crowded thoroughfare, sending a crew out in a rotten ship, and so on, the accidental homicide that follows is imputable to the agent no matter how much precaution he may say he has used to avert such a death.
Suppose, secondly, the original act of the agent is illicit but such that accidental death rarely follows from it; then if he takes due precaution he is not ordinarily guilty of homicide. He has, say, stolen an automobile, and is going along the street leisurely, when a careless child runs off the sidewalk under the machine and is killed.
1. No person, then, may hasten his own death or permit any one else to hasten it.
2. No physician may in any possible condition kill a patient merely to effect euthanasia.
3. The state has no more right than the physician to permit the killing of patients to bring about euthanasia.
Were such permission given to physicians it would immediately be abused by men with even the best intentions. In all countries and in the largest cities the medical profession is swarming with quacks. What is done in crass ignorance by licensed physicians and specialists every day in the name of medicine is appalling. Professor Orth of the Pathologic Institute in Berlin makes the statement that of all the appendices that have been submitted to him for microscopic examination after removal by conservative and supposedly skilled physicians, 17 per cent. showed no disease at all, and should not have been removed. In this country the percentage of normal appendices removed because of vague abdominal pains is much larger.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (June 7, 1913) gave a list of post-mortem examinations where the diagnosis made by men with a reputation for fair work had been correct in only the following ratios:
| Diagnosis | Diagnosis | |
| correct. | incorrect. | |
| Per cent. | Per cent. | |
| Diabetes Mellitus | 95 | 5 |
| Typhoid Fever | 92 | 8 |
| Aortic Regurgitation | 84 | 16 |
| Cancer of Colon | 74 | 26 |
| Lobar Pneumonia | 74 | 26 |
| Chronic Glomerular Nephritis | 74 | 26 |
| Cerebral Tumor | 72.8 | 27.2 |
| Tuberculous Meningitis | 72 | 28 |
| Gastric Cancer | 72 | 28 |
| Mitral Stenosis | 69 | 31 |
| Brain Hemorrhage | 67 | 33 |
| Septic Meningitis | 64 | 36 |
| Aortic Stenosis | 61 | 39 |
| Phthisis, Active | 59 | 41 |
| Miliary Tuberculosis | 52 | 48 |
| Chronic Interstitial Nephritis | 50 | 50 |
| Thoracic Aneurism | 50 | 50 |
| Hepatic Cirrhosis | 39 | 61 |
| Acute Endocarditis | 39 | 61 |
| Peptic Ulcer | 36 | 64 |
| Suppurative Nephritis | 35 | 65 |
| Renal Tuberculosis | 33.3 | 66.7 |
| Bronchopneumonia | 33 | 66 |
| Vertebral Tuberculosis | 23 | 77 |
| Chronic Myocarditis | 22 | 78 |
| Hepatic Abscess | 20 | 80 |
| Acute Pericarditis | 20 | 80 |
| Acute Nephritis | 16 | 84 |
Pneumonia is a very common disease, extremely dangerous, and by skilful treatment it is very often cured, yet of these 100 cases 66 were not diagnosed. I recently saw a severe case of double pneumonia which a physician was treating as "indigestion," and he was giving pepsin tablets for the supposed indigestion. There is such a thing as extraordinary scientific precision in medical work, but it is rare; the ordinary physician treats