care in the period. Between the 1930s and 1960s, the medical profession in general regarded a death as a failure and subjected dying patients to treatments aimed at prolonging life rather than relieving suffering, an attitude prevalent in the post-war National Health Service, which failed to make adequate provision for the dying. Increasingly, patients feared suffering before death and, although a few doctors were prepared to advocate the use of opiates in palliative care openly, published medical commentary on care of the dying was rare before the 1960s. However, a 1948 article observed that "purely medical treatment" for the dying could "almost be written in one word—morphine", and a 1957 British Medical Association meeting heard the use of heroin to induce euphoria, oblivion and relieve pain. Although doctors were aware that hastening a patient's death was illegal, one suggested in 1944 it was something "the law forbids in theory but ignores in practice": he added it was something only the doctor could judge, and it should not be discussed with patients, their families or medical colleagues. In Adams's case, the court did not ignore the suggestion that he had hastened death and, as Devlin makes clear, he needed to clarify for the jury, and incidentally the medical profession, the extent to which the law allowed the orthodox doctor to go in easing the passing of the dying. Mahar regards Adam's statements to Hannam on Mrs Morrell as less about his guilt or innocence than a disconnection between the medical and legal views on assisted dying: Adams never denied giving his patients large doses of opiates, but denied it was murder. This was not simply Adams's idiosyncratic view, as appears from the evidence of Dr. Douthwaite for the prosecution, who accepted that a physician might knowingly give fatal doses of pain relieving drugs to terminally ill patients, adding it was not his business to say whether it was murder. Devlin's directions to the jury confirmed that it was a medical issue, not a legal or moral one, whether Adams' treatment was designed to promote comfort. Devlin's view was that Adams may have been guilty of mercy killing or even perhaps finishing off a troublesome patient, but was one who cared for his patients to the best of his ability. Adams eased the passing of Mrs Morrell, but his greed brought his motives into question. Mahar notes that an editorial in a