INHERITANCE OF TEMPERAMENT. 113 



lescence is apt to be a time of weakened inhibitions, and so suicides 

 occur among school-children in great numbers. Thus Eulenberg (1914, 

 p. 4) states that in Prussia the suicide-rate for persons under 20 years 

 is, per 100,000 persons of the corresponding ages, from 6.6 to 8.6 in 

 different years. Actually in Prussia, in 1905, 603 persons under 20 

 (403 male and 200 female) committed suicide. The large number 

 appals us and we seek to secure its reduction, and yet the eliminated 

 individuals are a highly selected and not the most desirable part of the 

 population ; they are selected on the basis of feeble inhibition. 



3. SUICIDES IN HYPOKINETICS. 



Suicides occur in these over-inhibited individuals as truly, though 

 apparently not as frequently, as in the sub-inhibited. The mental 

 anguish of the feeling of insufficiency and unworthiness seeks relief, 

 and the idea of death as a sure way out and the only way out is an 

 alluring one. Here belong many cases of suicides accompanying 

 arteriosclerotic depression (Gaupp, 1910, p. 23). 



Examples of such suicides appear in the records of every hospital. 

 I cite some from the Kings Park records. No. 6837 1 , born 1859, married 

 happily, but was childless. July 1910 depression began; "she had 

 crying spells daily and felt that nobody understood her case or cared 

 for her." Admitted to the hospital the same month, she was depressed 

 and moody; worried a great deal and did not sleep well * * * ; 

 asked her husband not to leave her alone, as she might harm herself; 

 at times she showed considerable agitation. Removed 9 months later 

 to a private sanitarium, she obtained a rope, climbed to the top of a 

 fence surrounding the grounds, threw one end of the rope over a tree- 

 limb, fastened the other end to her neck, and then stepped off. This 

 case well illustrates the deliberateness and certainty often shown in 

 suicides of the depressed as opposed to the common (but not universal) 

 precipitousness of the attempts of the hyperkinetic, which are fre- 

 quently only shallow threats. 



A patient at the hospital, an Irish girl, had been admitted 6 months 

 before my interview. She stated that she had been unfaithful to her 

 husband, who was a good and forgiving man, but she had sinned at a 

 time when "things were dark to her" and she had no clear insight, and 

 some days after that, on attending mass, she heard words spoken by 

 the priest which deepened her depression; she was overwhelmed with 

 remorse, and on her return home she went into the bath-room and 

 turned on the gas, but was found before life was extinct. She con- 

 tinued to show marked depression up to the time of the interview, but 

 had not been suicidal while at the hospital. 



Our family histories give many instances of suicidal tendencies 

 during depression, but often lack details. In family A (34 : 77) the pro- 

 positus is easily discouraged, gets very much depressed, thinks no one 



