Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1895 — Bonaparte’s Horrible Suggestion. [ARTICLE]

Bonaparte’s Horrible Suggestion.

As a votary nt the shrine of science he believed in the lawfulness of suicide, and he now coldly suggested murder to his surgeon general, hinting that an overdose of morphine would end the sufferings of those plague-stricken men who would have to be abandoned. It was long believed that such a dose actually > ha<l been administered to the sixty or more who were left behind. But the conclusive report that the report was false is in the fact that when Sir Sidney Smith occupied Jaffa the sufferers were still alive. Napoleon to the last defended the suggestion as proper, though he falsely denied having made It himself, and untruthfully declared at St Helena that he had delayed three days to protect the dying patients. With cynical good nature, be told the fine story of how the noble French physician Desgenettcs (who, in spite of his conviction that the plague was contagious, had already inoculated himself with tlie disease in order to allay the panic of the terror-stricken soldiers) had rejected the criminal suggestion, replying that a physician’s profession was to save, not to destroy, human life.—Century.