to which we often subject our dying friends on account of
ignorance of how to care for them in that condition. We have a science of
birth; obstetricians who have been trained for years in their profession
and have developed a wonderful skill, assist the little stranger into this
world. We have also trained nurses attendant upon mother and child, the
ingenuity of brilliant minds is focused upon the problem of how to make
maternity easier, neither pains nor money are spared in these beneficent
efforts for one whom we have never seen, but when the friend of a
lifetime, the man who has served his kind well and nobly in profession,
state, or church, is to leave the scene of his labors for a new field of
activity, when the woman--who has labored to no less good purpose in
bringing up a family to take its part in the world's work--has to leave
that home and family, when one whom we have loved all our lives is about
to bid us the final farewell, we stand by utterly at a loss how to help;
perhaps we even do the very things most detrimental to the comfort and
welfare of the departing one.

Probably there is no form of torture more commonly inflicted upon the
dying than that which is caused by administering stimulants. Such potions
have the effect of drawing a departing spirit into its body with the force
of a catapult, to remain and to suffer for sometime longer. Investigators
of conditions beyond have heard many complaints of such treatment. When it
is seen that death must inevitably ensue, let not selfish desire to keep a
departing spirit a little longer prompt us to inflict such tortures upon
it. The death chamber should be a place of the utmost quiet, a place of
peace and of prayer, for at that time, and _for three and one-half days
after the last breath_, the spirit is passing through a Gethsemane and
needs all the assistance that can be given. The value of the life that has
just been passed depends greatly upon conditions which then prevail about
the body; yes even the conditions of its future life are influenced by our
attitude during that time, so that if ever we were our brother's keeper in
life, we are a thousand times more so at death.

Post-mortem examinations, embalming and cremation during the period
mentioned, not only disturb the passing spirit mentally, but are
productive of a certain amount of pain, for there is still a slight
connection with the discarded vehicle. If sanitary laws require us to
prevent decompo