Suicide: Its History, Literature, Jurisprudence, Causation, and Prevention

The question “to what extent does the mind of one of the lower animals resemble that of man,” has been argued by many able men, but no very definite decision has been arrived at...

It is not my intention in these pages to enter into a lengthened discussion of the once much debated question as to whether suicide be invariably a proof of pre-existing insanity.

The Literature of the subject is of very diverse character. France, Italy, and Germany have produced many works on suicide as a fact. England has been content with one work on s...

Quite closely connected with the consideration of these influences, are others partly dependent on them, the manners and customs of a population, the extent of civilisation, and...

The history of Greece extends back to such a remote period that it is not clearly evident what the general opinion on Suicide was among its early inhabitants. However, a few lan...

AJAX, 1184 B.C., in the Trojan War, slew himself in a frenzy of anger against Ulysses, to whom instead of to himself the armour of the dead Hector had been allotted.

In considering this portion of our subject we shall be assisted by analogy, if we investigate the data of contributing causes, in a manner similar to that which is ordinarily pu...

By English law Suicide is of the Felony of Murder, inasmuch as it is the murder of one of the subjects of the sovereign: it is a murder committed by a man on himself. There is a...

The struggle for existence, at our present high pressure, ends in the survival of the strongest and most able; the weaker in body, and the feebler in mind, get pushed aside and...

The relative proportion of suicides exhibited by the sexes is one of the data in connection with our subject that received the earliest attention, and from such early observatio...

The suicide rate of any great city is found to be higher than the rate of the rural district around it, and this statement is true of every country. Many causes contribute to th...

It is instructive to compare the statistics of crime in general with those of suicide; such data as are found in “Recherches sur le penchant au Crime,” by A. Quetelet, illustrat...

It is a somewhat curious fact, considering the immense number of feasible means of terminating one’s existence, that there should be such a small number of methods in constant u...

The civil branch of the jurisprudence of our subject is more complex than the criminal. Life assurance companies naturally object to have to pay sums of money for suicidal death...

No crime seems to have so strong a tendency to spread by example and imitation as this one. Epidemics have occurred on many occasions, and I have already mentioned an epidemic o...

Incurable bodily diseases, and the accompanying pain of some other disorders, are not uncommon causes of a voluntary death. It has been estimated that incurable diseases are eve...

The inhabitants of the majority of countries are not at the present time so unique racially, as was probably the case at an earlier date. Races of men have spread themselves to...

But beyond this hindrance to accuracy lies the deeper one, that whatever may be the State under consideration, even when we have obtained the authentic numbers supplied by Gover...

In every age of the world, and in the history of almost every country, we find instances more or less numerous of men and women who, preferring the dim uncertainty of the future...

The information conveyed in the preceding pages, in reference to suicide in England, and in the countries of Europe, applies in a small degree only to Hindostan. In this vast tr...

It is an old, old story that the destinies of man are _governed_ by the sun, moon, and planets; but modern science rather scouted the ideas of the astrologers and Chaldeans; to...

Life weariness was the suicide cause, which French authors supposed to be excited in English people by their climate; and in like manner to their error in attributing a heavier...