Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — A Suicidal Epidemic. [ARTICLE]

A Suicidal Epidemic.

A recent number of Chambers' Journal gives an entertaining article on suicides, from which we copy: “Sometimes,” says the writer, “a person determined to destroy himself will wait months and years for an opportunity of executing the deed in the particular manner he has marked out for himself, and the very inclination to suicide may be removed by withdrawing the particular objects that would awaken the idea. Thus a man who has tried to drown himself will be under no temptation to cut his throat. Example, it is well known, is a powerful cause of excitement to the suicidal act. We were once told by a physician that a hypochondriacal patient used to visit him invariably the day after reading the report of a suicide in the daily papers, possessed by a morbid fear of imitatating the act of which he .read. Sir Charles Bell, surgeon of Middlesex Hospital, was one day describing to a barber who was shaving him a patient’s unsuccessful attempt to cut his own throat, and, on the barber’s request, pointed out'the anatomy of the neck, showing how easily the act might be accomplished. Before shaving operations were completed the barber had left the shop and cut his own throat according to Sir Charles Bell’s exact instructions. Sometimes there is an epidemic of suicides, as at Versailles in 1793, when out of a small population 1,300 persons destroyed themselyes in one year; or as in the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, when six of the inmates hanged themselves on a certain crossbar within a month. Very often the disease is hereditary, and at a certain age the members of one family will all in turn evince the suicidal tendency, while even children of very tender vears have been known to end their short fives by their own act, from force of example. Curious, too, are the methods of self-destruction, but they are too painful to bear description. A Frenchman once attempted to ring his own death knell by tying himseif'To the clapper of the church bell, which thereupon began to swing, and alarmed the villagers by its unwonted tones. All cases of determined suicides are characteristic of confirmed insanity; whereas, in a case of impulsive insanity, the perpetrator will often regret the act before it is completed and endeavor to save his life, as did Sir Samuel Romilly, thus demonstrating that the very attempt may effect the cure of the disordered brain. The months of March, J une and July are the favorites with men, September, November and January for women, in which they voluntarily end their lives. In youth men hang themselves, in the prime of life use firearms, and, when old, revert to hanging. Women usually prefer Ophelia’s ‘.muddy death.’ Poisoning is a method adopted by the very young of both sexes. We have the consoling reflection that, prevalent as brain disorder is in our country, at least 80 per cent, of cases of insanity are curable if treated at ah early stage; while it is to be noted that it is not pleasurable, productive brain work that does the mischief, but rather the mental strain which results from the high pressure of our artificial life.” * The duck of a lover makes a goose of a i husband.