OCR Text |
Show RECENT STUDIES OF SUICIDE. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine, who has made an intelligent study of the statistics and authorities on the subject, says that suicide has been rapidly increasing all over Europe during the last hundred years, and that it is still on the increase. Not fewer than sixty thousand Europeans, or about one in every five thousand of the population, are reported to kill themselves every year. The writer cited asserts that the average rate of self-destruction is five times greater now than it was a century ago. It is not improbable that the percentage is much higher now than formally, but it may be questioned whether the increase comes anywhere near the above estimate. The apparent is doubtless much greater than the real increase, owing to the fact that statistics in the subject are now systematically gathered, which was not the case in the last century. Suicide is now regarded as something more than a mere sin or form of impiety. It is a malady in all civilized countries as inevitable as forgery or the measles. "It is," says Buckle, "merely a product of the general condition of society," and "in a given state of society a certain number of persons must put an end to their existence." Recent studies of the subject by statisticians and thinkers confirm this view, and furthermore show that there is much method in the madness and that this unfortunate phase of civilization is governed by general laws, which, within certain limits, operate rigidly and universally. Thus it is found that as a rule people are more anxious to shuffle off the mortal coil in civilization than semi-civilized or barbarian countries, more in northern than in southern latitudes, more in summer than in winter, more in cities than in rural districts, more among the educated than the illiterate, more among ??? Can't Read ???, and more among poor than well-to-do. The Danes are the most and the Portuguese the least self-destructive, the Prussians more than the French, the French more than the English, and the English more than the Austrians, Russians, Italians or Spanish. Apart from the latitude climate has no effect, showing that Montesquien was wrong when he said London fog made men kill themselves. But the seasons seem to exert an important influence. Most people prefer to take themselves off in fine weather. Spring and summer are favorite times. July offers to the victim the most and November the fewest attractions. The number of suicides is twice as great in May, June or July as in any winter month. That women more than men should shun death by their own hand, and should make up but a fourth of the ill-starred list is but natural and proper. Nor is it strange than convicts and prostitutes, who know neither shame nor fear, do not die voluntary deaths in any appreciable ratio. But why should the tendency to self-slaughter increase steadily and surely with advancing years, and old age rather than an earlier life become the great suicidal period? For this strange fact appears to be established by statistics, and that in proportion to the number of individuals of each age suicides are about as frequent above three-score and ten as between the ages of twenty to forty. Even the choice of means is governed by fixed laws which are substantially the same everywhere. Poison and the knife have gone out of fashion, and only about fifteen percent of those dissatisfied with life seek to escape it by the bullet. The favorite methods are hanging and drowning, between which there appears to be little choice, since one is resorted to about as often as the other. Together they are preferred by about seventy per cent of suicides. - N. Y. (New York) Herald. |