The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation. Austin O'Malley

without knowing the cause of the symptoms; that is, the symptom-treater is a quack, and if euthanasia were legalized thousands of such quacks would be permitted to murder with an overdose of morphine any querulous old man or woman who might fall into their hands. Osteopaths and chiropractors are masseurs, and they know very little of massage, but they are licensed by legislatures to practise medicine, and some of them even try obstetrical malpractice. They, too, would be licensed to inflict euthanasia. Pure homeopathy is little more than a name at present; it is faith-healing without prayer. It attenuates its drugs 100 per cent. for thirty repetitions, to a degree expressible by one with sixty ciphers. Consequently it gives sugar of milk or alcohol in minute quantities plus a label, and one cannot make much of an impression on any disease with a label. Such practitioners also would come under the euthanasia act.

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Cardinal John de Lugo. Disputationes Scholasticae et Morales, vol. vi; De Justitia et Jure, disputatio x.

      St. Augustine. I Contra Petilianum, cap. 24; Ad Marcellianum Comitem, cap. 21; De Civitate Dei, cap. 17 to 28.

      Aristotle. III Ethicorum, cap. 7, and lib. v, cap. ii. Plato. Phaedo.

      Cicero. Quaestiones Tusculanae. I, lib. v; De Somno Scipionis.

      Lessius. De Justitia et Jure, lib. ii, c. 9, dub. 6, 7.

      Molina. De Justitia et Jure, vol. i, tr. 2, disp. 119; vol. iv, tr. 3, disp. 1 and 9.

      St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, 2, 2, q. 64, a. 5, 7.

      St. Alphonsus Liguori. Theologia Moralis, vol. iv, tr. 4. See this book for opposed opinions and a bibliography.

      Costa-Rossetti. Philosophia Moralis, thesis 120.

      Ferretti. Philosophia Moralis, theses xci, xciv.

      Macksey. De Ethica Naturali, theses xxxiv et seq.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

General Principles Concerning Mutilation

       Table of Contents

      The members of the human body may be injured (1) by a blow, which without bloodshed causes pain or a bruise; (2) by a wound, which breaks the continuity of the tissues; (3) by mutilation, which, without killing, removes some member requisite for the integrity of the body. The term Mutilation as applied to the human body has various meanings. In the civil law mutilation of a person is called Mayhem, an old form of the word Maim, and is defined by Blackstone[5] as "such hurt of any part of a man's body as renders him less able in fighting to defend himself or annoy his adversary." By statute in the United States and Great Britain the scope of the offence has been so extended as to include injuries to a person which merely disfigure or disable. Mutilation in the civil law now implies the taking away of some part of a legal instrument, as a will, contract, or the like, by any one who has no right to make this alteration.

      In canon law mutilation is like malicious or accidental mayhem in the civil law, and it has also a technical phase in relation to irregularity as affecting the reception of ecclesiastical orders. The mutilation requisite to irregularity as affecting the reception of Holy Orders may differ from mutilation in its purely moral and accidental aspects. Broadly, an irregularity is a canonical and permanent impediment to the reception and exercise of ecclesiastical orders. It does not exist unless it is actually promulgated in some canon, and it is not necessarily grounded on corporal deformity. Defects of the body that cause canonical irregularity are such as would render the public ministration of a clergyman either impossible or indecent.

      

      Molina, treating of mutilation, says[6] it does not exist unless there is an amputation or shortening (detruncatio) of a member. When a foot or hand is so weakened without amputation that it cannot exercise its function the person is said to be maimed or lame, not mutilated. He holds that a finger, and a fortiori a phalanx of a finger, are not properly members. In defining mutilation as a cause of canonical irregularity[7] he contends that the weakening of a member so that it cannot perform its function is not a true mutilation canonically. He does not agree[8] with Cajetan, de Soto, and others who hold that an important part of a whole member is equivalent to a member so far as technical canonical mutilation is concerned. Molina says that a part of the body as a member to fulfil the requirements of the law on mutilation as a cause of irregularity must have a distinct, complete function of its own, not be a mere part conducing to the function. Ballerini[9] agrees with Molina, but he draws attention to a decretal of Innocent I. which makes an amputation by oneself of even a part of one's own finger a full canonical irregularity, because of the unnatural quality of the act.

      Suarez defines mutilation thus: "Mutilare significat proprie membrum aliquod abscindere"[10]—to mutilate means, strictly speaking, to cut off any member. He holds with Cajetan that an important part of a member is in itself equivalent to a member. A reason he offers for his opinion is that a eunuch is enumerated among those who are canonically mutilated, but the eunuch, he tells us, "does not lack any member which in itself has a function in the body independent of all other organs." This is not true. The testicles, which the eunuch lacks, have two distinct functions, independent of other organs—they make the spermatozoa and an important internal glandular secretion. These facts were not known in Suarez's time (1548-1617). Suarez adds this remark: "There can be a grave sin in a marring [diminutio] of any chief member, although there may be no grave mutilation; as, for example, to cut off a part of a finger is undoubtedly a mortal sin, yet, in the opinion of all moralists, it is not enough to cause irregularity."

      St. Alphonsus Liguori defines mutilation thus: "Mutilation here signifies that some principal member be separated from the body; that is, a part of the body that has in itself a distinct function, as a foot, hand, eye, ear, etc."[11] He says[12] canonical irregularity as a punishment is not incurred by a person who cuts off another man's finger, thumb, lips, nose, auricle, or who knocks out teeth, because these are supposed by canonists not to be properly members of the body, but parts of members. To blind a man in one eye is not enough to cause canonical irregularity; the eye must be taken out.[13] All these injuries are of course mutilations in the moral sense of the term. To blind a man without removing the eye, to cut out his spleen in the treatment of Banti's disease, to remove a woman's ovary or uterus, to cut off part of the point of a finger, to crop the top of an auricle, to knock out a tooth, and any other permanent marring of the body, even to cause an unsightly scar across the face, are all mutilations in the moral sense of the term. A physician, midwife, nurse, or parent who neglects an infant's eyes, and so permits ophthalmia neonatorum to blind the child, is guilty of grave mutilation. In the year 1914, in the Chicago schools, 45,176 children were found suffering from various defects, and 35,425 were advised by the examining physicians to seek treatment; in each of these cases the parents were informed of the nature of the disease and the necessity for treatment, but only 40 per cent. of the parents paid any attention to the notices. Of 5754 cases of diseased tonsils, which are likely to affect the heart permanently, only 4 per cent. were treated; of 1254 cases of discharging ears only 10 per cent. were treated, although such a condition may go on to deafness if not attended to. These parents were criminally guilty of grave neglect in permitting the mutilation of the heart and ears.

      Any notable mutilation inflicted upon oneself is akin to the malice of suicide, and when perpetrated on another it is related to homicide. The dominion over the members of the body, as over the whole body, belongs to God alone. Man is constituted by his parts, members, taken together, and if he were master of his members he would be master of himself. Again, each member of the body is naturally united to that body and ordained for determined organic functions; so it is wrong to render these members unfit for their natural function or to separate them from the body, unless such actions are necessary for the preservation of life itself. Although man is not master of himself, he is the administrator of himself; and therefore when the amputation of any member is necessary for the preservation