SPONTANEOUS AND IMITATIVE CRIME, 661 



At one period in France the fashionable mode of exit was by the inha- 

 lation of charcoal-fumes, at another by a leap into the Seine. In Lon- 

 don a certain monument had to be closed to visitors to prevent would- 

 be suicides from following the example of an original who had thrown 

 himself from the top. A public promenade in Berne, above the Aar, 

 is also much affected by suicides in that vicinity. In this matter of 

 suicide a remarkable example is given of the power influencing to 

 direct imitation, by Dr. Carpenter in his " Mental Physiology." This 

 case was quite devoid of excitement or of any emotional character. 

 He says that Dr. Oppenheim, of Hamburg, having received for dis- 

 section the body of a man who had committed suicide by cutting his 

 throat, but who had performed the deed in such an inartistic manner 

 that his death did not take place until after an interval of great suffer- 

 ing, jokingly remarked to his attendant : " If you have any fancy to 

 cut your throat, don't do it in such a bungling way as this a little 

 more to the left here, and you will cut the carotid artery." The indi- 

 vidual to whom this dangerous advice was addressed was a sober, 

 steady man, with a family and a comfortable subsistence ; he had 

 never manifested the slightest tendency to suicide, and had no motive 

 to commit it ; yet, strange to say, the sight of the corpse and the ob- 

 servation made by Dr. Oppenheim, suggested to his mind the desire 

 to imitate the deed, and this took such firm hold of him that he car- 

 ried it into execution, fortunately, however, without duly profiting by 

 the anatomical instruction he had received, for he failed to cut the 

 carotid artery, and recovered. Here, plainly, the ideational form of 

 imitation took possession of the man's mind, and forced him to the 

 act. Subsequently to the remark of the Doctor, he had evidently 

 brooded over the matter till the desire to imitate the suicide became 

 irresistible. Had Dr. Oppenheim anticipated any result from a casual 

 remark, he would probably have said : " Don't think about this body 

 after you leave here ; occupy your mind with some other subject if 

 possible, a pleasant one." 



A curious case of suicidal mania occurred a few years since, under 

 the writer's own observation, in Essex County, New Jersey, where a 

 young man of feeble intellect, but exceedingly susceptible to praise and 

 sympathetic emotions, committed suicide, with the evident intent of 

 drawing out the pity and sympathy of his friends. He had attended 

 one or more funerals where eulogies of the deceased, flowers, and other 

 tokens of kind feeling abounded, and he desired to be in the place of 

 the corpse, and to know that such a scene would be imitated in his 

 case his limited reasoning powers not suggesting that he would then 

 be insensible to the friendly manifestations. The imitative instinct 

 was too strong for the reflective faculties and determined the fatal act. 



Another case in point is that of an eminent physician who, in 

 relating his own experience while suffering under an attack of fever 

 attended with delirium, states that, being obliged to call in a colleague 



