MSJ 11:2 (Fall 2000) p. 201 pain.26 However, the term euthanasia assumed a different connotation when used by British intellectual historian W. E. H. Lecky in 1869. Lecky used the term “to signify the act or practice of taking the life of a person who is hopelessly ill and doing so for reasons of mercy.”27 This understanding of the term has continued in contemporary usage. As noted above, some writers continue to use the term exclusively for a killing instigated by a second party. For others, the