SUICIDE.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 258, 12 March 1898, Page 4

SUICIDE.

Suicide, as a eolutiou of the problem of life, constitutes for the physiciau, as for the sociologist, an interesting subject of study and observation. After a long period during which the proportion of suicides remained stationary, a marked increase characterised the years 1843 to 1853. Another wave followed the war cf 1860 in Germany, preceded in France by a similar tendency in 1860, an epoch which corresponds to the apogee of the Imperial reign. The commercial revolution caused by the treaties of commerce, commencing at or about the ytar 1808, determined an upward movement in England, but since 1870 the tendency to an increased proportion of suicides, beginning in France, Ins spread almost over Europe. A close study of the circumstances under which individuals take refuge in self-destruction shows clearly enough that the cause is intrinsic, and that climate, season, and social conditions have little, if any, infiuerce. Although we should hardly be justified in assuming that suicide is invariably a manifestation of insanity, it is a fact that most of those who compass self-destruction have suffered more or less from neurasthenia, a euphonious term for nervous breakdown. Among individuals belonging to this category imitation sometimes plays a remarkable rote. It hasjbecn noted that suicide is comparatively tare among Catho'ics and Jews and is proportionally frequent among Protestants. Unmarried persons and persons without families appear to suffer vastly more than anxious parents from the tacdium vitac and act accordingly. One of the most curious and unexpected results of a study of this subject is to demonstrate the slight influence of mere hard-hips in the production of suicidal tendencies, indeed the effect is all the other way. In Ireland, •vhere the peasant leads a hard life.suicide i-i very tare. In the infinitely wretched Calabria self-destructicn is practically unknown, and there are ten times less suicides in Spain than iu France. Misery, indeed, appears to have a deterrent influence, and per contra the proportion of suicides in a given locality appears, roughly speaking, to correspond to the percentage of persons living on their means. If self destruction be more frequent to-day than of yore, the explanation must not be sought in enhanced competition and greater strain, but in the fact that our appetites have grown out of all proportion to our means, and having exhausted the possible, we resent being deprived of the impossible. It is a condition of moral, and not physical, wretchedness that urges to ?elf - destruction, and this, unfoitunately, is a factor against which we aro without available arms.—Medical Press.