A Midwife Through the Dying Process: Stories of Healing and Hard Choices at the End of Life

Abstract

Dr. Richard Whitehead with his first class in gross anatomy (1890), adjacent to the rock that marked the southern border of the campus. (Photograph courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill.) From Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1952-1993 , edited by Mary Jane Kagarise and Colin G. Thomas, Jr, 461 pp, with illus, $65, ISBN 0-9653036-0-8, Chapel Hill, NC, Department of Surgery, UNC School of Medicine, 1997. Reproduced by permission. Timothy Quill, MD, has established his reputation as a leading advocate of physician-assisted suicide, primarily by telling stories tenderly recounting the cases of his patients. His Diane story touched people and made it plausible to consider physician-assisted suicide as the compassionate thing to do for dying patients. In A Midwife Through the Dying Process , Quill offers nine additional stories of