Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/102

92 too freely. As I have before said, the busy life men lead in the metropolis, and the necessity for brain-stimulus, accelerate the facilis descensus. The disgrace of men in high position, impending ruin and other facts, will often prompt suicide as a mode of relief.

A form of suicide which figures largely in American statistics is, jumping from an elevation. This may be chosen by the individual as an effectual method, if he hesitates to select one, or may be the result of a momentary state of delirium produced by the surroundings. This latter is a common form in some European cities that contain high churches, monuments, or towers. I have myself experienced a morbid desire of this character, after an ascent of the Mountain Corcovado, in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. When looking over a steep precipice upon this bay, two thousand or more feet below, I felt a strange restlessness and distention of the blood-vessels, with an irresistible desire to leap out into the clear air. This disappeared when I looked upon some object near by. A medical friend relates a case in his own experience. He went with an acquaintance up into a very high, unfinished public building. There was no evidence of insanity in his acquaintance. When my friend's back was turned, his companion jumped far out into the air, and fell mangled to the sidewalk. In France this form of suicide is a very common one, 45 individuals in the year 1820 having precipitated themselves from heights. In the year 1852, 16 men and 19 women chose this means of self-murder. So prevalent were those suicides, that the authorities refused admission to the Column Vendôme. As I have before said, this method is not an unusual one. In New York, between the years 1866 and 1872, there were 21 victims.

Dr. C. P. Russell, of New York, has informed me of a friend who is to such an extent the subject of the impulse to throw himself from heights, that he will never sleep upon the third or fourth floor of any dwelling.

The impulse to commit suicide with sharp-cutting instruments has been more common in the European cities than those of this country, and, in the majority of instances, suicide by these weapons has been resorted to by insane subjects.

A most important study in connection with this subject is the influence of the mode of life of the poorer classes. I allude more particularly to the tenement-house system—to the colonization of many thousand people in a limited space, much too small for them. They are brought together so, that every vice becomes, to a great degree, contagious. Bad examples are followed by the younger generation, and it is much easier for a seed of sin to take root here than one of virtue. Families of several nationalities are closely packed together in front and rear houses. Ground and labor are so expensive, in the larger cities particularly, that this mode of living is unavoidable.

Despite the earnest efforts of an efficient health board in the city