TY - JOUR T1 - Books: <em>Words in Pain. Letters on Life and Death</em> JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 252 LP - 252 DO - 10.3399/bjgp19X702569 VL - 69 IS - 682 AU - Martin Scurr Y1 - 2019/05/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/69/682/252.1.abstract N2 - Olga Jacoby. Edited by Jocelyn Catty, Trevor Moore Skyscraper Publications, 2018, HB, 254pp, £15.00, 978-1911072355The Conway Hall library is within the headquarters of the Ethical Society; Conway Hall being the oldest free thought organisation in the world. Trevor Moore, one of the editors of Words in Pain came across this book in the library, a collection of letters written between 1909 and 1913 by Olga Jacoby, a woman dying of an unspecified illness, who records in her letters her fear of a long drawn-out death, her decision to adopt four children — an unregulated activity at that time — and her rejection of any formal religious belief, feeling that religion gave insufficient credit to the achievements of science. She writes: ‘… Science is turning … ER -