any extreme pain. It is also used for the pangs of death. Much of the terror of death consists in the pangs and convulsions wherewith the agony seems attended; tho' we have reason to believe that the pain in such cases is ordinarily not extremely acute; a course of pain and sickness having usually stupified and indisposed the nerves for any quick sensations. However, various means have been thought of for mitigating the agony of death. Lord Bacon considers this as part of the province of a physician; and that not only when such a mitigation may tend to a recovery, but also when, there being no further hopes of a recovery, it can only tend to make the passage out of life more calm and easy. Complacency in death, which Augustus so much desired, is certainly no small part of happiness. Accordingly the author left cited ranks euthanasia, or the art of dying easily, among the desiderata of science; and does not even seem to disapprove of the course Epicurus took for that end,

—Hinc physicias ebrirus haujit aquas.

Opium has been applied for this purpose, with the applause of some, but the condemnation of more.