INCREASE OF SUICIDE 



185 



Professor Westergaard, of Copenhagen, has given us the fol- 

 lowing figures •}■ 



Number of Suicides per Million op Inhabitants. 



From this table we see that Norway is the only country which 

 presents the phenomenon of an absolute decrease in the rate of 

 suicide ; between the periods 1865-69 and 1894-98 the number 

 of suicides per million of inhabitants has fallen from 77 to 60. 

 In Saxony, which is the classical land of suicide, the figures have 

 fallen from 375 during the period 1880-86 to 307 in 1894-98; but 

 the latter figures are, nevertheless, slightly higher than those of 297 

 for the period 1865-69 ; in any case, the total of 300 suicides per 

 million of inhabitants as an average per annum during a period 

 of four years is enormously high. In all the other countries 

 imder observation the increase has been regular and enormous. 

 Professor Wirminghaus has endeavoured to find the exact 

 number of suicides in France during more than half a century ; 

 he has divided the sixty-seven years under consideration into 

 fifteen periods, and the figures he gives are instructive "^ 



^ H. Westergaard, Die Lehre von Mortalitdt und Morbilitat, p. 647. Jena, 

 1901. 



2 A. Wirminghaus, Art. Sdbstmordstatiatih in Worterhuch der Volks- 

 wirtschaft, vol. ii., p. 500. Jena, 1898. 



