SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 189 



them is often a welcome friend, a happy relief from walking the 

 streets hungry. 



How many suicides are directly attributable to disease can not 

 be stated with exactness, but it may be said, nevertheless, that at 

 the present time, with our advanced skill in surgery and medicine, 

 suicide from disease is undoubtedly on the decrease. Of all sui- 

 cides there are none to be pitied more than those who kill them- 

 selves to escape the racking pain of an incurable illness. For 

 the victim of this sort there is no hope. Another class of sui- 

 cides, which closely resemble those caused by disease, includes 

 those due to infirmity. Often persons smitten with blindness, or 

 who have met with some terrible accident, in a fit of discourage- 

 ment kill themselves. Those blind or deformed from birth, how- 

 ever, seldom resort to suicide. Not knowing the pleasure of sight 

 or limb, they go through life contented. 



The theory that we hold more strongly to life as we approach 

 its natural conclusion is contradicted by statistics, which every- 

 where show that the last half of life exhibits a great increase in 

 the rate of suicide. And here it may be pointed out that as to the 

 age of greatest frequency, suicide and crime are diametrically op- 

 posed. While suicide attains its highest rate after the prime of 

 life is past, crime, on the contrary, reaches its highest point be- 

 tween the ages of twenty and thirty years. We remark, further, 

 the alarming increase in late years of what is called child-suicide. 

 It is here that education strongly asserts itself as a true and ex- 

 citing factor, for it has been shown that in those countries where 

 what we are pleased to call education is rigorously forced upon 

 children, there child-suicide is most frequent. And for this sys- 

 tem of forced education there is no excuse. It is terrible in its 

 consequences. To increase the strain to just below the collapsing 

 point is not to educate. It only serves to fill the world with nerv- 

 ous, neurotic, morbid beings. 



Another cause of the increase of child-suicide is the fear of 

 physical punishment. Instances of children destroying them- 

 selves because of punishment or the fear of threatened punish- 

 ment are constantly recorded in the public prints. Repeated 

 cruel punishments will often extinguish, even in the healthy 

 child, the love of life so characteristic of youth. What, then, are 

 we to expect of poor, devitalized children subjected to the cruel- 

 ties of barbaric parents ? 



At the present day man is much more prone to suicide than 

 woman. This is true of man in regard to epilepsy, crime, and 

 other marked signs of degeneration. But it has been observed 

 that as woman approaches man in her mode of life she also 

 becomes more familiar with those abnormal conditions which 

 have previously been peculiar to man. The comparative immu- 



