Good point. I would likely do the same, especially if it were likely that the child would die. The loss of a child would be too much to bear for me--it's like deciding which of your limbs you'd like amputated. No one should have to make a decision like that.
Furthermore, so many people are already so unnattached to their own children--it's very commonplace to read that a girl will deliver a baby in a public restroom and just smother it in a plastic garbage sack--it's happened 4 or 5 times in my town just the past couple of years. (All of the children were born healthy).
In 2 of the cases, the babies were left on someone's front door step, less than half a mile and a year apart from each other. They suspected they were the same mother, and all of the babies were African-American, the second time, it was a set of twins. Both babies were alive when they were born but one had been suffocated by the other because they were carelessly placed in the box. It dismays me to no end that I seemed to care for these children more than their own mother did. To my knowledge, they never did find her.
Also, I appreciate the info on Merrick, the Elephant Man, who had always fascinated me due to the beauty of his spirit even though he experienced only the worst of treatment by nearly every person he ever encountered. Whenever I'd find myslef getting cocky as a teenage, I'd read a book about Merrick, and that always restored my humility.
Pity about the cast of his head, because though I 've seen the pictures taken by Frederick Treves and the London Hospital many times, I'm sure it would inspire quite a bit more wonder before my own eyes.
As I do remember it, he died before he was 30 years old, maybe at 26 or 27, if my memory can be trusted. At the time of his death, the circumference of his head was about 36 inches.