SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 191 



tion, making their surroundings more cleanly and agreeable, and 

 by faithfully executing thorough and most effective sanitation. 

 Proper sanitary and hygienic measures have a wonderful effect 

 in renewing the vitality of our people. They are powerful agents 

 for improving morality. 



There probably never will be a time when suicide will be 

 unknown in the world, but there are many preventives that are 

 of value to-day. Religion has in the past been a powerful pre- 

 ventive. But this fear dies out as religion becomes broader. 

 The fear of future punishment on account of self-imposed death 

 is not now the preventive of suicide that it was fifty or a hundred 

 years ago. The moral influences of family life naturally have a 

 tendency to decrease suicide. Thus it has been found that in a 

 million of husbands without children there were four hundred 

 and seventy suicides, and in the same number with children there 

 were but two hundred and five. Of a million wives without chil- 

 dren one hundred and fifty-seven committed suicide, as against 

 forty-five with children ; widowers without children, one thousand 

 and four ; with children, five hundred and twenty- six ; widows 

 without children, two hundred and thirty-eight ; with children, 

 but one hundred and four. These figures are eloquent pleaders 

 in favor of family ties as conservators of life. They prove dis- 

 tinctly that man must love in order to live. 



Laws prescribing punishment for suicide are solecisms. If we 

 wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions for the better, 

 not for the worse. Suicide is beyond the reach of the criminal 

 code. Its prophylactic must be founded, not upon a statute, but 

 upon a wise and judicious management, medical, moral, and 

 philanthropical, of those unfortunate enough to attempt their 

 lives. It would be far better and more humane to sweep away 

 all legislation upon the subject so far as it relates to the indi- 

 vidual, and even take for granted that every person is insane who 

 attempts suicide, than to punish their attempts by imprison- 

 ment. If the victim is insane, efforts should be made to restore 

 reason ; and if failure is met with, a sanitarium should be pro- 

 vided. Those who are sane should be reasoned with, calmed, and 

 assisted. 



Our hearts should be filled with tender compassion for those 

 whose lives have been such as to become valueless to them. We 

 should pity them. In the gentlest language possible we should 

 condone and not condemn their act ; for it is only with a spirit 

 of sympathy and not of vindictiveness that we can hope to study 

 with profit the causes and preventives of suicide. 



