History of Hospice care

Back in the 1950s, My mother used to sew incontinence pads for the local cancer home run by the Hawthorne sisters: soft cloth on the outside but layers of newspapers within. We now use blue pads of course, which is a godsend for people with incontinence.

Another difference: back then, people were not told they had cancer, and often died in the hospital, mainly because they required IV or IM narcotics which could not be given at home. On the other hand, keeping people alive with tubes wasn't done then either.

 The Cancer home was run by a group of Dominican sisters in an order founded by the daughter of writer Hawthorne: So they are known as the Hawthorn Dominicans.

Plough Magazine has an article on their work in hospice care for cancer patients.

in Hawthorne, New York, the Dominican congregation of St. Rose of Lima lives a quieter charism. The sisters nurse terminal cancer patients. Their community was founded in 1900 by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Lathrop converted to Catholicism and took the religious name Mother Mary Alphonsa. She began by caring for incurable cancer patients on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the congregation carries on that work today, outside the city.

Hospice is often run by people of faith, who don't see death as the ultimate evil but as something we all have to face before being taken to our reward. Hence the emphasis by the sisters in the article, who not only are experts on comfort care but people of deep faith who care for people and prepare them for their death.

,,,Sr. Stella Mary was nervous when she began working with patients, but older sisters gave her two pieces of advice. “Remember, you are first a religious.” She would be trained in basic medical care, but her first work would always be to pray and love the patients. Nursing was a way to express that love.

The other piece of advice was more practical – all the patients are terminal. She wouldn’t be a surgeon whose smallest gesture could save a life or end it. Everyone came to the sisters to prepare to die, and hopefully to die well.

Rose Lathrop was not only the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, but an author herself. Her sad marriage and death of her child influenced her to convert to Catholicism and become interested in social causes of the poor in NYC

And she was also influenced by the suffering and death from cancer of her fellow poet Emma Lazerus, whose poem graces the Statue of Liberty.

From TheWorkingNurse: 

Becoming an oncology nurse was a brave decision because cancer was a highly stigmatized disease, associated with “bad heredity,” poor hygiene and immoral behavior. There was also a popular belief, including among some scientists of the time, that cancer was cotagious.

She set up a small hospital in the slums and gradually her and her helpers took vows, first as lay women but then the group evolved to a congragation of nuns.

Howevere, the modern hospice movement owes it's origin to a pious Anglican British woman, Cicely Saunders:

 

While working at St Joseph’s, Cicely devoted herself to establishing a new kind of hospice that combined compassionate care with medical care. In 1967, her vision became a reality when St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, London, opened. St Christopher’s became widely recognised as the first modern hospice because it was the first to combine teaching and clinical research, pain and symptom control with compassionate care.

With all the news of President Jimmy Carter going into hospice care, Hospice is again in the news.

NYTimes article here (behind paywall) gives a good description of how hospices work. 

Hospice teams provide crucial emotional and logistical support, as well. Social workers might assist in setting up a will, power of attorney or funeral arrangements. Spiritual care providers — religious or nondenominational — can help a person come to terms with the end of life through prayer or facilitating conversations with loved ones.

Modern hospice care often stresses home care. The problem? Often the care is overwhelming to caregivers, but hiring full time caregivers and inpatient hospice care is expensive. And with the increased number of people without family, more will need this option.

Sigh. 

another problem: Many people no longer have a religious outlook on life and death, and want to control it and are vulnerable to those who have another agenda, that of killing the aged and inconvenient.

Think I'm wrong? Look at Canada, where so called aid in dying went from killing those terminally ill to killing the handicapped and even poor people who can't get help within a a few years.

or look at the numerous popular films, tv shows, and books that have pushed the idea that killing a person, often one who has other options to live long with proper help, as the only and best way to care for them.

These people alas not only manipulate the media, but alas this mindset has long been pushed by teachers at major medical schools and in both ethical and mainstream medical journals for at least 30 years.

and the coming danger: The infiltration of the hospice movement, which traditionally was run by religious minded folk,  by the cynical and stealthy pro death euthanasia types, who push aid in dying as the best way to go (and never mind noticing that it saves money for the insurance companies/government who are too cheap to offer the more expensive alternative of inpatient hospice). 

Again, you might think I am being paranoid, but anyone who was familiar with the so called bioethics jounals know this is true.Thirty years ago,  when I helped coauthor an article in a medical journal about this, I did some research and I saw how a lot of journals were quietly pushing both medical rationing for the old  and the idea of compassionate killing as part of a doctor's job.

 Indeed, many medical schools today do not use the Hippocratic oath, that forbids the taking of life, but instead use more modern versions, such as the Oath of Dr Lasagna (written in 1964) that includes this line: 

Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.  

arrogant prick. Oh my, sorry...

At the same time, Soros' Open Society was funding  programs to "discuss" end of life care in public meetings, and they included people who had written pro euthanasia articles in ethical journals (something that was rarely noticed by the MSM articles about these programs).

And yes, political correctness was alive and well back then: One of my friends, a teacher of bioethics at a prominent Boston Medical school who opposed such things was essentially marginalized and ridiculed. 

I shudder at what might be going on now in the good old USA (I live in the Philippines). 

When I read this stuff I remember what one of my Objibwe patients took their beloved aunt to a specialist. Instead of examining her and recommending medicine for her behavior problems. Instead, he spent an hour trying to persuade her family to remove her feeding tube. When the family left the office, one told the doctor: That's the difference between you white folks and us: We don't kill our old people.

These pro death folks are not religious believers, but the problem is that most ordinary people are. So ordinary people need to be reeducated: which is why you see so many sentimental scenerios of killing the sick and handicapped in the MSM, films and best selling novels. 

Then they spread confusion:  they pretend the idea that refraining from extraordinary treatment is the same as killing someone. 

And ordinary people who don''t see this as manpulation so believe them. 

Worse, it leads the very pious and minorities who distrust doctors/the medical establishment to condemn anyone who says it's okay to refrain from extra-ordinary treatment.

Catholic ethicists know the idea that it is ethical to refrain from extraordinary treatment has a long history: for example, they often cite a Spanish admiral who refused leg amputation, pointing to the fact that refusing amputation, especially in the days before antibiotics, could save a life but leave somone crippled.

Nowadays, extraordinary treatment might be dialysis for the very elderly, using a respirator after a stroke or head injury, or tube feeding.

Food and water via a tube used to be considered extraordinary treatment, and still is for people dying where the bodily functions have shut down or where there is a severe stroke.

But in these days when tube feeding is often started for convenience of the nursing home, and then stopped for the convenience of the family or as stealth euthanasia, the line has blurred: Hence JP2 insisted removing the feeding tubes may now no longer be considered ethical in these cases.

Sigh.