Editor’s note: We are pleased to present this excerpt from the new book by Professor Richard Weikart, Unnatural Death: Medicine’s Descent from Healing to Killing (Discovery Institute Press).

In 1982 in Melbourne, Australia, the joy that Nick Vujicic’s parents felt at his birth turned to dismay when they saw him for the first time. His arms and legs were missing because of a rare disorder. Unprepared for this, his mother was so shocked that she refused to hold him. However, after quickly coming to terms with her emotions, she and her husband accepted him, loved him, and did everything they could to help him succeed in life. They could not have imagined how fulfilling and joyful his life would become. Today Vujicic is a famous motivational speaker, best-selling author, husband, father, and Christian evangelist, whose book, Life without Limits, encourages others to live life to the fullest.

According to his own testimony, Vujicic is living an extremely happy life, despite his disabilities. He explains:

At first they [my parents] assumed that there was no hope and no future for someone like me, that I would never live a normal or productive life. Today, though, my life is beyond anything we could have imagined. Every day I hear from strangers via telephone, e-mail, text, and Twitter. They approach me in airports, hotels, and restaurants and hug me, telling me that I have touched their lives in some way. I am truly blessed. I am ridiculously happy.

This illustrates a commonplace observation of those who work with people with disabilities: those without serious disabilities are often very poor judges of the positive possibilities for people with disabilities (or of their own potential happiness if they were to become disabled). It is presumptuous for people to assume that disability inevitably leads to unhappiness, especially when there are so many examples of happy and fulfilled people who are disabled. Unfortunately, some people even conclude that those with disabilities or serious illnesses are better off dead. Vujicic counters this attitude by stating that “life isn’t always rosy, but it is always worth living.”

Ancient Greece and Rome

Vujicic’s story would probably have turned out quite differently if he had been born in ancient Greece or Rome. In those societies infanticide was common, especially for infants with disabilities. Most likely he would have been denied that joyful and contagious “life without limits” that has been so inspiring to multitudes who have heard him or read his books. Fortunately for him, however, he was born to devout Christian parents in a society still heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, which offers the weak and sick love and compassion, rather than death.

But that is changing. As the influence of Judeo-Christian morality wanes in Europe and the U.S., deeds such as suicide and euthanasia grow palatable, especially among the intellectual elites. In matters of life and death we are going backwards to a more brutal time.

Suicide and Infanticide in Greek Societies

In ancient Greek society, unaided suicide, physician-assisted suicide, and infanticide were not uncommon. This might seem surprising in light of the now-famous Hippocratic Oath, composed anonymously in Greece around 400 BC. In the Hippocratic Oath physicians agreed never to harm patients, saying further, “neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.” Most people (including myself) construe this as a ban against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. However, some scholars argue (implausibly, in my view) that this was merely a prohibition against using their knowledge to help someone commit murder.

Famous though the oath is today, however, in ancient Greece it seems to have represented a minority position among Greek physicians, many of whom did help sick people commit suicide. Indeed, in the first 1,500 years of its existence, the Hippocratic Oath was almost unknown. It was rediscovered in medieval times, when it was adapted to Christian ideas, and it only became prominent as an oath for physicians in Europe and the U.S. in the 18th century. The Hippocratic prohibition against assisted suicide was thus not very influential in ancient Greek and Roman society.

However, some Greek philosophers agreed with the Hippocratic prohibition against assisted suicide because they rejected any kind of suicide. Pythagoreans, followers of the sixth-century BC philosopher Pythagoras, were among the earliest to condemn suicide categorically. They believed in body-soul dualism and reincarnation, and they argued that humans have an obligation toward God not to leave their bodies before the time ordained by God.

According to Plato’s account in Phaedo, Socrates, who lived about a century after Pythagoras, used the same reasoning to condemn suicide. Socrates stated, “Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession of theirs.” Thus, he continued, “a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as he is now summoning me.” As indicated by the last phrase, Socrates did not see his own drinking of poison as a violation of this principle, because his death was being forced on him by the governing authorities, not by his own will. (Many believe that views ascribed to Socrates in Plato’s dialogues may be more the position of Plato than Socrates, but whether these ideas belonged to Socrates or Plato, they were influential among Greek intellectuals.)

In Plato’s later work, The Republic, Socrates discussed the way physicians should interact with patients with incurable illnesses. Socrates suggested that physicians should refrain from treating people whose serious illnesses made them unproductive, unless the doctors could actually cure the patients and restore them to productivity. He asserted that it is not in the interest of the state for ill, unproductive people to continue living “good-for-nothing lives.” He stated that “if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he [the physician] had no business to cure him; for such a cure would have been of no use either to himself, or to the State.” Socrates’ reasoning here places the interests of society above the individual’s desires. However, it seems clear that here he was not advocating assisted suicide or active euthanasia, but rather letting the patient die. Thus (in Plato’s telling) Socrates comes down against both suicide and assisted suicide.

Plato himself, however, intimated in one of his last works that he considered suicide under some circumstances permissible. To be sure, he still took a largely negative view of suicide, going so far as to call for posthumous punishment of those committing suicide. (He thought they should be buried alone without any honor.) Nonetheless, Plato allowed for three exceptions: 1) if the state required it (this covered Socrates’ situation); 2) if the person was “under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune”; and 3) if the person would otherwise suffer intolerable shame. These exceptions, especially the second one, seem very broad and would presumably excuse the suicide of a terminally ill person suffering pain.

Aristotle, Plato’s student, condemned suicide in his Nicomachean Ethics. He argued that suicide committed an injustice against the state, because the person was abandoning his civic responsibilities. Further, he argued that committing suicide to escape from pain or unpleasantness was cowardly: “To die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil.” Thus it seems clear that Aristotle would not have approved of suicide or assisted suicide for those suffering illness.

The Case of Infanticide

However, Aristotle, like many of his fellow Greeks, did approve of infanticide for babies with significant disabilities. In his book Politics he even advocated laws banning the raising of deformed children.

Most infanticide in the Greco-Roman world occurred through “exposing” the baby, i.e., by abandoning the newborn infant outside. This usually resulted in death, either by wild animals, thirst, or malnutrition. In some cases the baby would be rescued and adopted, often to be raised as a slave. However, disabled infants were only rarely adopted, so the vast majority perished.

While exposing disabled infants was commonplace in Greek and Roman society, many historians are skeptical about the Roman author Plutarch’s story about the Spartans taking their children to the city elders, who would decide if the children were fit to live. This is likely mythical, as there is no evidence to corroborate Plutarch’s account, which was written centuries after the events. However, Spartan parents, like many other Greek parents, probably did abandon disabled children to their death.

Stoicism and Suicide

Around 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium (not to be confused with the earlier Zeno of Elea, famous for Zeno’s paradoxes) founded the Stoic school of philosophy, which later would influence Rome. The Stoics believed that at death a person’s soul was reunited with the cosmic soul or God. Thus they did not fear death, even as they denied personal immortality.

Stoicism emphasized the suppressing of emotions and the elevation of reason. While they did not believe suicide was always justifiable, they considered it rational to choose death when one’s health or living circumstances were intolerable. And indeed, it is reported that when Zeno was old he killed himself after sustaining a foot injury. Zeno’s successor, Cleanthes, is likewise said to have committed suicide, in his case by voluntary starvation.

A later Stoic philosopher, Chrysippus, listed five reasons justifying suicide: 1) if a pressing matter dictates it (such as an oracle telling one to kill oneself to save a city); 2) to keep from having to perform shameful things dictated by tyrants; 3) to escape serious illness; 4) to avoid poverty; and 5) if one became demented.

Romans Embrace Suicide and Infanticide

Stoicism became a very popular philosophy among the Romans. The first-century Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca denied that anyone had an obligation to continue living, arguing that one should rationally choose the moment of one’s demise. He wrote, “Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can…. He always reflects concerning the quality, and not the quantity, of his life.”

Seneca thus saw suicide as a rational choice in some situations, as, for instance, to escape suffering in seemingly hopeless circumstances. “In whatever direction you may turn your eyes, there lies the means to end your woes,” he wrote. “See that precipice? Down that is the way to liberty. See you that sea, that river, that well? There sits liberty — at the bottom.” Elsewhere, he elaborated thus:

If one death is accompanied by torture, and the other is simple and easy, why not snatch the latter? Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.… There is no occasion when the soul should be humoured more than at the moment of death. Let the soul depart as it feels itself impelled to go; whether it seeks the sword, or the halter, or some draught that attacks the veins, let it proceed and burst the bonds of its slavery. Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone. The best form of death is the one we like….

You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one’s own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom…. Must I await the cruelty either of disease or of man, when I can depart through the midst of torture, and shake off my troubles?

Seneca thus approved of suicide, as long as it was rationally considered rather than prompted by passion. When faced with the threat of execution by Emperor Nero at age 68, Seneca ended his life by slitting his wrists and then taking poison.

Influenced by Stoic thought, many other prominent Romans committed suicide as well, including Cato the Younger, who killed himself rather than submit to Julius Caesar. Roman accounts generally lauded his suicide as gallant and heroic.

Stoics were not the only ones justifying suicide in Roman society. Epicureans also regarded suicide as acceptable. Epicureans believed that the goal of life was the pursuit of pleasure, and this philosophy was very popular among ancient Romans.

Lucretius, a first-century-BC Epicurean philosopher, denied the existence of anything non-material, explaining that in his view, “Death, then, is nothing to us, no concern / Once we grant that the soul will also die.” Lucretius did not spell out the implications of this for suicide, but it seems clear that the Epicurean philosophy provided no reason to oppose suicide.

Infanticide was likewise acceptable to Romans. Seneca wrote:

We knock mad dogs on the head, we slaughter fierce and savage bulls, and we doom scabby sheep to the knife, lest they should infect our flocks: we destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed; to separate what is useless from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason.

Seneca and other Stoics, in other words, thought that killing infants who had disabilities was simply the reasonable thing to do, no different from killing mad dogs or scabby sheep.

And infanticide was not limited to children with disabilities. Fathers in the Roman empire (with whom the decision rested) might choose to kill a child because of the family’s economic situation, or because the child was a girl, or because of omens or the positions of the stars.

They had little concern for the sanctity or value of human life.

The Hebrews Reject Suicide

Not everyone in antiquity devalued life. The ancient Hebrews — also known as Israelites or Jews — took a contrary stance.

All scholarly references may be found in Unnatural Death: Medicine’s Descent from Healing to Killing.