Again, convulsions, which so often attend the process of dying, are accepted in evidence of suffering, when in fact they are the reverse, for they imply a loss of consciousness and sensibility, and therefore, of the capacity to feel pain. They are automatic, and in all essential respects like the convulsions of epilepsy, of which the subject is wholly unconscious. The convulsive movements that sometimes attend the last moments, and with which the person expires, constituting the so-called “death struggle,” are doubtless of the same painless character. Some few, however, do really suffer grievously in dying, and expire in great bodily torture. This occurs in some diseases of the heart and great vessels of the chest, in angina pectoris, and in ileus. But especially in that most fearful of diseases, hydrophobia, in tetanus, and in spasmodic cholera--in maladies characterized by spasm of the external muscles, as distinguished from their convulsion, for spasm implies no such unconsciousness as does convulsion, but the reverse. Such cases are rare, but they are so terrible that they fix themselves in the memory, exert an undue influence on the judgment, and, although really exceptional in occurrence, and in the sufferings they entail, come to be regarded as but extreme instances of what is assumed to be the universal and inevitable lot of the dying. Happily for mankind it is not so. So long as consciousness and intelligence continue, and they often do so to the last, the influence of mind and of the emotions on the bodily process of dying must be kept steadily in view. They are well-nigh as potential in the dying man as they are in the healthy. Hope is as soothing and fear as depressing in the one condition as in the other. To the dying there is no greater solace and cordial than hope--it is the most soothing and cheering of our feelings, and if, when all hope of life and in the present has fled, the dying man can dwell with hope and confidence upon his future, it will be well for him. The retrospect of a well-spent life, “memoria bene actæ vitæ, multorumque benefactorum recordatio” is a cordial of infinitely more efficacy than all the resources of the medical art;[18] but a firm belief in the mercy of God, and in the promises of salvation will do more than anything in aid of an easy, calm, and collected death. To those who are sceptical on this point, and such there are, I would remark, that unless a man has himself felt the influence of religion on his own mind, he is unable fully and accurately to understand its influence on others. If I may trust my own experience I should say, that in the aggressive _dis_believer, as in the mere passive agnostic, doubt and anxiety as to his future is all but sure to obtrude itself on his last conscious moments, disturb them, and render such an euthanasia as we contemplate, impossible.