Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 78, Wrote on Death
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Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, an internationally known author and expert on death and dying who became a pioneer for hospice care, died Tuesday night after a series of strokes. She was 78.
Kubler-Ross’s 1969 book “On Death and Dying” was a best-seller with her theory that the dying go through five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Kubler-Ross wrote more than 20 books dealing with the natural phenomenon of dying with her writings translated in 26 languages.
Born in Zurich, Kubler-Ross graduated medical school at the University of Zurich in 1957. She came to New York the following year and was appalled by hospital treatment of dying patients.
Kubler-Ross began giving lectures featuring terminally ill patients, who talked about what it felt like to be dying.
In recent years, she had taken to denying death existed at all, and looked at death as a higher form of consciousness, alarming her admirers and making her sound, perhaps, like a dying patient.