SUICIDE AND THE WEATHER. 609 



absolutely free from rainfall or snowfall, and those on which there was 

 either, without considering the amount. 



The figure referred to discloses some unexpected facts — namely, that 

 the clear, dry days show the greatest number of suicides, and the wet, 

 partly cloudy days — the gloomiest of all weather — the least, and with 

 differences too great to be attributed to accident or chance; in fact, 

 thirty-one per cent, more on dry than on wet days, and twenty-one per 

 cent, more on clear days than partly cloudy. As will be seen, on cloudy 

 days the occurrence was about normal. What docs this mean? Must fic- 

 tion resign her right to ring in gloomy weather and blinding storms as a 

 partial excuse for ending an existence made more unendurable by these? 

 If such be the case, it is well that Dickens and Lytton and Poe are gone, 

 for they would be robbed of a large number of their tragic climaxes. 

 England has long been characterized as 'gloomy Britain,' and Mon- 

 tesquieu has called it the 'classic land of suicide,' stating that the 'ex- 

 cessive number of suicides for that country is due to its gloomy weather.' 

 Statistics have shown, however, that the number is not excessive there, 

 being less per million inhabitants than for any other important Eu- 

 ropean nation. An interesting paper, appearing in the British maga- 

 zine Once a Week (vol. xix.) over no signature (though the writer was 

 evidently not a Scotchman), has a bearing upon the subject. It says: 



"The idea that the prevalence of suicide in this country (England) 

 is due to our bad weather is precisely one of those hasty and illogical 

 inferences which are characteristic of the Gallic mind. The constant 

 gloom of bad weather ought to acquaint us so thoroughly with moods of 

 depression that suicide would never occur to us. Look at Scotland, for 

 instance, where suicides are rare. Why are they rare? Simply because 

 a succession of Scotch Sundays has so accustomed the people to pro- 

 longed despondency that any sudden misfortune can not sink their 

 spirits any further. One has only to spend a dozen Sundays in Glasgow 

 or Edinburgh to become inoculated against suicide. So far from Lon- 

 don fogs driving people to jump off Waterloo Bridge, they ought to train 

 the mind to bear any calamity. A man who has taught himself to eat 

 prodigious quantities of opium feels scarcely any effect from other forms 

 of intoxication. We can educate our mental susceptibilities as we can 

 our muscles, and the more we educate them the more they are able to 

 bear." 



There are many truths beneath the jocular vein of this quotation, 

 and the writer expressed more facts than perhaps he knew. 



Certainly a comparison of suicides for Denver and New York City 

 supports his theory, for in the former city, where cloudy and partly 

 cloudy days are less than one-third as frequent as in the latter, we find 

 suicide excessive during the gloomy weather. Yet the conditions there, 

 both social and climatic, are so unusual as to give this fact little weight 

 in a comprehensive study of suicides, and we must maintain that Vile- 

 mais's dictum that 'nine-tenths of the suicides occur in rainy or cloudy 



VOL. LVIII.— 39 



