Providing the means for suicide after judging the “justice and opportuneness of voluntary deaths” is far from unprecedented, as Montaigne's example shows. Since antiquity, doctors have at times told patients intent on ending their lives in what dosage poisons and various other preparations become lethal. Some have prescribed such preparations for these patients; others have simply left barbiturates or other medications at their bedside, specifying that they should be careful about not exceeding a certain dosage since this would bring about their death. Likewise, it is from doctors that commandos and spies going on missions have acquired poisons to carry along in case of capture by enemy forces.

While all such practices have a long history, the term “physician-assisted suicide” is a neologism, perhaps less than ten years old, employed in challenges to laws prohibiting doctors (as well as all others) from being direct accessories to suicide. By now, the term is more central to the U.S.