New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher

Jessica Mitford
No hazard

To my question, “Are undertakers, in
their capacity of embalmers, guardians
of the public health?”, Dr. Carr’s an-
swer was short and to the point: “They
are not guardians of anything except
their pocketbooks. Public-health vir-
tues of embalming? You can write it
off as inapplicable to our present-day
conditions.” Discussing possible in-
jury to health caused by the presence
of a dead body, Dr. Carr explained
that in cases of communicable disease
a dead body is considerably less of a
hazard than a live one. “There are sev-
eral advantages to being dead,” he said
cheerfully. “You don’t excrete, inhale,
exhale, or perspire.” The body of a per-
son who has died of a non-communi-
cable illness, such as heart disease or
cancer, presents no hazard whatsoever,
he explained.

Seneca, James S. Romm (editor)

The famous and the obscure

You may complain, “But he was

snatched away when I didn’t expect it.”

Thus all are deceived by their own trust

and a willed forgetfulness of mortal-

ity in the case of things they cherish.

Nature promised no one that it would

make an exception to necessity. Every

day there pass before our eyes the fu-

nerals of the famous and the obscure,

yet we are busy with other things, and

we find a sudden surprise in the thing

that, our whole life long, we were told

was coming. It’s not the unfairness

of the fates, but the warped inability

of the human mind to get enough of

all things, that makes us complain of

leaving that place to which we were

admitted as a special favour.

Professor Dame Sue Black

Absolute certainty

Why are we surprised when people

die? Over 55 million of us around the

world do it every year – two a second

• and it is the one event of our lives
  that we know with absolute certainty
  is going to happen to every single one
  of us. This by no means diminishes
  our sadness and grief when it happens
  to someone close to us, of course, but
  its inevitability demands an approach
  that is both practical and realistic.
  Since we can’t influence the creation
  of our lives, and their end in unavoida-
  ble, perhaps we should be focusing on
  what we can regulate: our expectations
  of the distance between them.

Our library

Our library

All That Remains

The American

Way of Death How to Die