The lead article by McCue and Cohen1 on Freud's physician-assisted death is eminently scholarly, but we submit that the title is ambiguous, and the careless or biased reader might conclude that there was an equivalence to physician-assisted suicide. Euthanasia is an applicable term, but in its current range of use, a writer must also define the meaning.
We suggest that the article might have quoted the relevant paragraph from the biography of Freud by Ernest Jones, in which the terminal event is described.2 Assuming accuracy of Jones' account, Freud was dying and was given one third of a grain of morphine (21 mg; route not reported), after which he went to sleep and died more than 12 hours later. From Jones' text, Freud's death actually occurred about 36 hours later ("just before midnight the next day"), but could this have been a misprint, and was it the same day?