604 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SUICIDE AND THE WEATHER. 



By Professor EDWIN G. DEXTER, 



UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 



MUCH has been written and rewritten on the subject of suicide. It 

 has long been a favorite topic with the student of social statis- 

 tics, and has been scientifically treated from the standpoint of race, of 

 nationality, of social condition, of occupation and of climate. Whole 

 volumes have been devoted to the problem and magazine articles almost 

 without number. It is not, however, my intention in this paper even to 

 summarize the conclusions arrived at in all this mass of literature, but 

 to discuss a phase of the subject which can not have escaped the reader 

 of the daily paper, and has long proved an enigma to the special student 

 of the problem of self-destruction — that is, the daily fluctuation in the 

 occurrence of suicide. Why is it that upon picking up our daily paper 

 one morning we see the heading 'Epidemic of Suicide', and find the de- 

 tails of six or eight or even a dozen successful or unsuccessful attempts 

 recorded for the previous day — a number greater than for the whole 

 week preceding? Yet such is often the case — so often, in fact, as not 

 infrequently to have been the subject of editorial comment, with vague 

 queries as to the cause of such a wave of emotional depression and con- 

 sequent self-destruction. 



The answers to this query have been many and varied, among the 

 most frequent of which has been chance. Mimicry and suggestion have 

 been proposed, and without doubt have their place in the solution of 

 the problem of the periodical fluctuation of the suicide curve, but still 

 can not account for all its peculiarities. The weather has also been 

 suggested as the cause of the fluctuation referred to, and it is to the fol- 

 lowing out of this promising clew that this paper is confined. 



From a priori grounds it would seem to be a good one, for of all the 

 environmental conditions, those of the weather are the only ones which 

 vary for all the individuals in a given locality simultaneously. A and B 

 and C all have troubles peculiarly their own, the climax of which could 

 not be expected to occur upon the same day; but when the east wind 

 blows and the sky is leaden A, B and C all feel the influence, what- 

 ever it may be, and an empirical study of large numbers of A's and 

 B's and C's, noting their behavior under such conditions, would seem to 

 be the surest method of discovering just what the influence is. 



That weather states have a mental effect has long been recognized. 

 Literature is full of allusions to the fact, and not a few of the world's 



