Sherwin B. Nuland
Sherwin B. Nuland
Sherwin Bernard Nulandwas an American surgeon and writer who taught bioethics, history of medicine, and medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and occasionally bioethics and history of medicine at Yale College. His 1994 book How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter was a New York Times Best Seller and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 December 1930
CountryUnited States of America
best biology both dying ecological individual inherent life planet served
Both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do.
achieve death event expression fact finality graceful last life nature ongoing repugnant sequence simply stark triumph universal yearning
'Death with dignity' is our society's expression of the universal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings. But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms.
becomes cycle death hope influence life people recognize renewed species whom
I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.
beauty believe coming convinced death families grieving leads leaves life together unnatural work
It's unnatural to believe death usually has a beauty and a concordance and is usually a coming together of your life's work. It leads to frustration for the patient. And it leaves grieving families convinced they did something wrong.
atmosphere decisive determine disease factor final insofar leave life manner nature
The final disease that nature inflicts on us will determine the atmosphere in which we take our leave of life, but our own choices should be allowed, insofar as possible, to be the decisive factor in the manner of our going.
certainly coming human saved
Do you know what the world will be saved by? I'll tell you. It'll be saved by the human spirit. And by the human spirit, I don't mean anything divine, I don't mean anything supernatural - certainly not coming from this skeptic.
lived seek
The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives.
belongs death love
Death belongs to the dying and those who love them.
completed conscious death fear medical time
I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school, that fear was gone.
became begun disorders dominate entered matter mild mood notion patients relatively time
Once the notion of depression had begun to dominate the diagnostic armamentarium, it became but a matter of time before patients with relatively mild disorders of mood or anxiety would be entered into it.
death disease exhausting force requires
Not death but disease is the real enemy; disease, the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
assigned fully known maladies mental might patients physical seemed specialty sufferings symptoms
Only the emerging specialty of psychoanalysis seemed to understand that mental maladies are not fully analogous to physical disease. They resist classification, and might better be known by their symptoms and the individualized sufferings of patients than by assigned names.
cannot demands handed healer individual judgment medical occasion periods taught
Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed.
certain depressed illness man notion recognize since spirits
You know, ever since man had any notion that some of his other people, his colleagues, could be different, could be strange, could be severely depressed or what we now recognize as schizophrenia, he was certain that this kind of illness had to come from evil spirits getting into the body.