BMJ 2013;347:f7180 doi: 10.1136/bmj.f7180 (Published 2 December 2013)
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Views & Reviews
VIEWS & REVIEWS PAST CARING
And finally … Wendy Moore freelance writer and author, London Doctors have also played audience to many a last laugh, intentional and otherwise. Lord Palmerston quipped: “Die; my dear doctor? That’s the last thing I shall do.” Hollywood impresario Wilson Minzer joked: “Well, Doc, I guess this is the main event.” And the poet Paul Claudel inquired: “Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?”
Unsurprisingly, those doctors whose last words have survived have generally been more concerned with documenting their final illness. The poet Keats applied his medical training to diagnosing his consumption when he recognised arterial blood as “my death warrant.” He died a year later, in 1821, after assuring his friend Joseph Severn: “I am dying. I shall die easy.” Joseph Bell, the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, recorded “heart weak” in his diary in February 1911, three days before his final entry: “Still alive. Not much more.”3
John Hunter logged his first angina symptoms, noting that he had no pulse, his breathing had stopped, and his face looked “like that of a corpse.” His last words went unrecorded, though, as they were uttered during a violent argument at a hospital management meeting, they were probably unprintable. In deathbed scenes since antiquity, doctors have listened to final words ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous and have chronicled for posterity pithy truths and punning tropes. The naval surgeon William Beatty even published his account of Nelson’s last words at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. After the well known entreaty for a kiss from his flag captain, Hardy, and a shrewd plea for his body not to be thrown overboard, Nelson expired with the remark: “Thank God I have done my duty.” Beatty did his too, pickling the admiral’s remains in brandy.1
Likewise the royal physician Lord Dawson recorded in 1936 the last words of King George V, albeit only in his private diary. Rather than the oft misquoted curse “Bugger Bognor,” the diary, opened 50 years later, reveals that the king’s last speech was: “God damn you!” This was supposedly aimed at his nurse, though more likely it was directed at Dawson as he administered the fatal morphine and cocaine.2
Most poignant of all, the surgeon and anatomist Joseph Henry Green (1791-1863) recorded his symptoms to the very end. On the arrival of his doctor, Green pointed to his heart and said: “Congestion.” Placing a finger on his own wrist, he visibly counted the pulses until his final word: “Stopped.”4 Competing interests: I have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and have no relevant interests to declare. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed. 1 2 3 4
Beatty W. Authentic narrative of the death of Lord Nelson . Cadell and Davies, 1807. Ramsay JHR A king, a doctor, and a convenient death. BMJ 1994;308:1445. Mackaill A, Kemp D. Conan Doyle & Joseph Bell: the real Sherlock Holmes . RCS of Edinburgh, 2007. Royal College of Surgeons. Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows online: Green, Joseph Henry. http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000018b.htm.
Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f7180 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2013
[email protected] For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
Page 1 of 1
Views & Reviews
VIEWS & REVIEWS PAST CARING
And finally … Wendy Moore freelance writer and author, London Doctors have also played audience to many a last laugh, intentional and otherwise. Lord Palmerston quipped: “Die; my dear doctor? That’s the last thing I shall do.” Hollywood impresario Wilson Minzer joked: “Well, Doc, I guess this is the main event.” And the poet Paul Claudel inquired: “Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?”
Unsurprisingly, those doctors whose last words have survived have generally been more concerned with documenting their final illness. The poet Keats applied his medical training to diagnosing his consumption when he recognised arterial blood as “my death warrant.” He died a year later, in 1821, after assuring his friend Joseph Severn: “I am dying. I shall die easy.” Joseph Bell, the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, recorded “heart weak” in his diary in February 1911, three days before his final entry: “Still alive. Not much more.”3
John Hunter logged his first angina symptoms, noting that he had no pulse, his breathing had stopped, and his face looked “like that of a corpse.” His last words went unrecorded, though, as they were uttered during a violent argument at a hospital management meeting, they were probably unprintable. In deathbed scenes since antiquity, doctors have listened to final words ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous and have chronicled for posterity pithy truths and punning tropes. The naval surgeon William Beatty even published his account of Nelson’s last words at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. After the well known entreaty for a kiss from his flag captain, Hardy, and a shrewd plea for his body not to be thrown overboard, Nelson expired with the remark: “Thank God I have done my duty.” Beatty did his too, pickling the admiral’s remains in brandy.1
Likewise the royal physician Lord Dawson recorded in 1936 the last words of King George V, albeit only in his private diary. Rather than the oft misquoted curse “Bugger Bognor,” the diary, opened 50 years later, reveals that the king’s last speech was: “God damn you!” This was supposedly aimed at his nurse, though more likely it was directed at Dawson as he administered the fatal morphine and cocaine.2
Most poignant of all, the surgeon and anatomist Joseph Henry Green (1791-1863) recorded his symptoms to the very end. On the arrival of his doctor, Green pointed to his heart and said: “Congestion.” Placing a finger on his own wrist, he visibly counted the pulses until his final word: “Stopped.”4 Competing interests: I have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and have no relevant interests to declare. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed. 1 2 3 4
Beatty W. Authentic narrative of the death of Lord Nelson . Cadell and Davies, 1807. Ramsay JHR A king, a doctor, and a convenient death. BMJ 1994;308:1445. Mackaill A, Kemp D. Conan Doyle & Joseph Bell: the real Sherlock Holmes . RCS of Edinburgh, 2007. Royal College of Surgeons. Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows online: Green, Joseph Henry. http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000018b.htm.
Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f7180 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2013
[email protected] For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
