Dying

Death is a very badly kept secret; such an unmentionable and taboo topic that there are over 750 books now in print asserting that we are ignoring the subject.At no time in history has there been so much attention paid to death as a subject for scholarly and literary study, clinical and research attention, or for cynical commercial exploitation. We have exceeded even the literary genre of the Ars Moriendi, which advanced the study of the art of dying some 500 years ago.Such an interest has a long and distinguished history, as we have demonstrated in the recent Arno Press series of reprints of classic works. Those who naively believe that the onlie begetter of Thanatology lived in Manhattan, or who snobbishly frown on the very term Thanatology as ugly modern jargon, should attend to their study of history. The earliest use I have encountered of this term in its modern sense is in the book, in the Bibliotheque Imperial, Paris: THANATOLOGIA-- Sive in Mortis Naturam Causas, Genera ac Species, et diagnosi Disquisitiones;published in Goettingen, in 1795.