No. 630] 



HUMAN MORTALITY RATES 



27 



enon of suicide in man marks the complete and total in- 

 hibition of this instinct of self-preservation. Suicide is 

 always an act in some degree mentally deliberated before 

 its performance. A constitutionally and hygienieally 

 sound mentality weathers the environmental storm which 

 suggests suicide. On the basis of this reasoning suicide 

 death rate is put in Table VII. 



Item 56, "Alcoholism," is included here because funda- 

 mentally deaths so returned would seem to be more truly 

 chargeable against the central nervous system than to 

 any other organ system. This opinion is founded on such 

 results as those of Barrington and Pearson, 21 who con- 

 clude, after a careful analysis of data regarding extreme 

 and chronic inebriates, that "there appears for constant 

 age little relation between alcoholism and physical fit- 

 ness," while between mental defect (and poor education) 

 and alcoholism there is a sensible relation. "We con- 

 sider it probable . . . that the alcoholism is not due to the 

 poor education, nor is it to any marked extent productive 

 of the mental defect, but the want of will-power and self- 

 control associated with the mental defectiveness is itself 

 the antecedent of the poor education and of the alco- 

 holism. ' ' 



The other cause of death needing special comment here 

 is leprosy. I am informed by my friend, Dr. G. H. de 

 Paula Souza, who has had unusual opportunities to know 

 leprosy in all its clinical manifestations, that when this 

 disease becomes fatal it is the nervous system which dis- 

 integrates and leads to death. 



The first five items in Table 8 are affections of the skin 

 about which there can be no doubt respecting the cor- 

 rectness of their inclusion here. The last four items, 

 smallpox, anthrax, mycoses and glanders are all diseases 

 with very low death rates at the present time. Biolog- 

 ically, they represent diseases which either gain entrance 

 through the skin, or in which the principal lesions are of 



» Barrington, A., and Pearson, K., "A Preliminary Study of Extreme 

 Alcoholism in Adults," Eugenics Lab. Mem., XIV, 1910. 



