Medicine: The Meaning of Death

The one inescapable fact of life is death. Yet man usually refuses to face it. What La Rochefoucauld said in 1665 is still generally true: "One cannot look fixedly at either the sun or death." Result: "Concern about death," says the University of Southern California's Psychologist Herman Feifel, "has been relegated to the tabooed territory heretofore occupied by diseases like tuberculosis and cancer, and the topic of sex." To remedy this, 21 experts in religion, arts and sciences have pooled their knowledge in a new book, The Meaning of Death (McGraw-Hill; $6.50), edited by Dr. Feifel

Far from being gloomy, it is...

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