Last update:
02-Aug-2018

The word euthanasia first appeared during the Hellenistic era. Greek and Latin writers used it in a sense quite different from the modern usage, referring to the serene death that seals a virtuous life, the heroic death on the battlefield or for the defense of supreme ideals, the death that comes at the right time, and the non-tortuous death. In the 17th century, it was transported into English by Bacon to describe the painless death that is accomplished by the application of medical means of pain relief. In the 18th century, Eugene Voulgaris considered it to be the endurance of death with bravery and placidity. It is only at the end of the 19th century that it acquired the specific meaning with which it is used today, i.e., the active acceleration of death by medical intervention, in patients suffering from incurable, agonizing illnesses. Although not named as such, practices similar to contemporary euthanasia have been testified since antiquity (Kea, Marseilles, Sparta), while the theoretical debate on voluntary suicide in old age, disability or sickness is timeless. The Hippocratic Oath, reflecting Pythagorean beliefs, explicitly forbids euthanasia, either as the administration of a lethal substance by the physician to terminate the patient's life, or as physician-assisted suicide. Plato, Aristotle, the Christian Fathers, and Kant categorically rejected suicide, which, conversely, was supported, under certain conditions, by some of the Stoics and Hume. The demand for euthanasia, in the modern meaning of the word, emerged in the 1870s in the United States of America and England. In Germany, the Nazi regime used the term "euthanasia" euphemistically to name a eugenics program of forced killing of patients suffering from incurable illnesses, and mentally retarded, disabled, psychotic, and even elderly people.

Key words: Bioethics, End-of-life dilemmas, Euthanasia, Suicide.