CHAPTER V.
IMITATIVE, OR EPIDEMIC SUICIDE.
Persons who act from impulse liable to be influenced—Principle of imitation, a natural instinct—Cases related by Cabanis and Tissot—The suicidal barbers—Epidemic suicide at the Hôtel des Invalides—Sydenham’s epidemic—The ladies of Miletus—Dr. Parrish’s case—Are insanity and suicide contagious?
The most singular feature connected with the subject of suicide is, that the disposition to sacrifice life has, at different periods, been known to prevail epidemically, from a perversion, as it has been supposed, of the natural instinct of imitation. This is not only the case with reference to suicide, but is witnessed also in cases of murder. The atrocities of the French Revolution are, to a certain extent, to be traced to the influence of this imitative principle. Persons whose feelings are not thoroughly under their command, who act from impulse and not from reflection, are very prone to be operated upon by the cause referred to. Man has been defined an imitative animal; and in many instances we witness this propensity controlling almost irresistibly the actions of the individual. Tissot relates the case of a young woman in whom this faculty was so strongly developed that she could not avoid doing everything she saw others do. Cabanis gives the account of a man in whom the tendency to imitate was so strongly marked, and active, from disease, that “he experienced insupportable suffering” when he was prevented from yielding to its impulses. A woman, in the ward of an hospital, will be seized with an epileptic fit; in the course of a short period, other cases will occur in the same ward. A child was brought into one of our metropolitan hospitals, labouring under a violent attack of convulsions. She had not been in the house five minutes before three children who were present were seized with spasmodic convulsions of a similar character. The commission of a great and extraordinary crime produces not unfrequently the mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. A criminal was executed at Paris, not many years ago, for murder. A few weeks afterwards, another murder was perpetrated; and when the young man was asked to assign a reason for taking away the life of a fellow-creature, he replied, that he was not instigated by any feeling of malice, but, after having witnessed the execution, he felt a desire, over which he had no control, to commit a similar crime, and had no rest until he had gratified his feelings. It is only on the same principle that we can account for the following singular case of suicide. It is related by Sir Charles Bell, in his “Institutes of Surgery.” The surgeon of the Middlesex Hospital who preceded Sir Charles Bell went into a barber’s shop, in the neighbourhood of the institution, to be shaved. As the barber was operating upon his chin, the conversation turned upon the case of a man who had been admitted the previous day into the hospital, and who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to kill himself, by cutting his throat. “He could easily have managed it,” said the surgeon, in rather a jocular strain, “had he been acquainted with the situation of the carotid artery. He did not cut in the proper place.” “Where should he have cut?” asked the barber, quietly. The surgeon, not suspecting what was passing through the barber’s mind, gave a popular lecture on the anatomy of the neck—pointed out the exact position of the large vessels, and shewed where they could easily be wounded. After the conversation, the barber made some excuse for leaving the room; and, not returning as soon as was expected, the surgeon went to look for him, when he was discovered in the yard, behind the house, with his head nearly severed from his body!
The following case is, perhaps, more strange and inexplicable than the one just related. The brother of a hairdresser and barber had killed himself by blowing out his brains. The circumstance appeared to affect seriously the mind of his relative. He left his business for a few days; and then returned, apparently more tranquil in his mind. In the morning, several persons came in to be shaved; and, all at once, he felt a strong, and almost overwhelming, inclination to cut some one’s throat. He fought manfully, however, against this horrid desire. During the whole of the earlier part of the day, he had been able to resist the gratification of the feeling. Every time he placed the razor in contact with the throat, he fancied he heard a voice within him exclaim, “Kill him! kill him!” In the afternoon, an elderly gentleman came into the shop to be shaved; and when the barber had nearly concluded the operation, he was again seized with the desire; and, before he could summon courage enough to suppress it, he gave the man’s throat a tremendous gash; fortunately, however, the wound was not fatal.
Gall informs us of a man who, on reading in the newspapers the particulars of a case of murder, perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, was instantly seized with a desire to murder his servant, and would have done so, had he not given his intended victim timely warning to escape.
Some years ago, a man hung himself on the threshold of one of the doors of the corridor at the Hôtel des Invalides. No suicide had occurred in the establishment for two years previously; but in the succeeding fortnight, five invalids hung themselves on the same cross bar, and the governor was obliged to shut up the passage.
Sydenham informs us that, at Mansfield, in a particular year, in the month of June, suicide prevailed to an alarming degree, from a cause wholly unaccountable. The same thing happened at Rouen, in 1806; at Stuttgard, in the summer of 1811; and at a village of St. Pierre Montjean, in the Valais, in the year 1813. One of the most remarkable epidemics of the kind was that which prevailed at Versailles in the year 1793. The number of suicides within the year was 1300—a number out of all proportion to the population of the town.
In the olden time, the ladies of Miletus, in a fit of melancholy for the absence of their husbands and lovers, resolved to hang themselves, and vied with each other in the alacrity with which they did the deed. In the time of the Ptolemies, a stoic philosopher pleaded so eloquently, one day, to an Alexandrian audience on the advantages of suicide, that he inspired his hearers with his principles, and a great number voluntarily sacrificed their lives.