Author: Brian Livesley. Published by Matador,
2009
ISBN 978-1848761-711
The Dying Keats was written for
the 20th Biennial Keats’ Memorial Lecture in 2009. With 50 years of
experience of caring for the elderly and the dying, its author, Professor Brian
Livesley, has successfully researched and crafted a succinct argument for
improved medical care for the dying; drawing on the distressing death of the 19th
century poet and apothecary, John Keats, in order to illustrate how doctors so
often fail their dying patients.
Keats
died at a young age from tuberculosis. Denied drugs such as opium to ease his
terminal suffering, he experienced distressing symptoms up to his death;
causing him to describe his final days as ‘this posthumous life of mine’.
Livesley describes this as the ‘Keatsian Experience’ and compares it to
euthanasia in the truest sense of its meaning; that being ‘a good and
comfortable death’.
As
the author points out, it is astonishing that today’s care of the terminally
ill is often little better than that experienced by Keats; believing this to be
due to the reluctance of doctors to consider death as a diagnosis that requires
treatment, and reminding us that ‘dying should be a humane experience for us
all’. A thought-provoking read for all clinicians.
(First
published in Pulse Today, July 2012
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