CHAPTER VIII.
PHYSICAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE.
Influence of climate—The foggy climate of England does not increase the number of suicides—Average number of suicides in each month, from 1817 to 1826—Influence of seasons—Suicides at Rouen—The English not a suicidal people—Philip Mordaunt’s singular reasons for self-destruction—Causes of French suicides—Influence of physical pain—Unnatural vices—Suicide the effect of intoxication—Influence of hepatic disease on the mind—Melancholy and hypochondriasis, Burton’s account of—Cowper’s case of suicide—Particulars of his extreme depression of spirits—Byron and Burns’s melancholy from stomach and liver derangement—Influence of bodily disease on the mind—Importance of paying attention to it—A case of insanity from gastric irritation—Dr. Johnson’s hypochondria—Hereditary suicide, illustrated by cases—Suicide from blows on the head, and from moral shocks communicated to the brain—Dr. G. Mantell’s valuable observations and cases demonstrative of the point—Concluding remarks.
The following are the physical causes which are commonly found to operate in producing the suicidal disposition—viz., climate, seasons, hereditary predisposition, cerebral injuries, physical suffering, disease of the stomach and liver complicated with melancholia and hypochondriasis, insanity, suppressed secretions, intoxication, unnatural vices, and derangement of the primæ viæ. These causes can only act by influencing sympathetically the brain and nervous system, and in that way interfering with the healthy operations of the mind. Much will, of course, depend upon the physical conformation of the individual exposed to such agents. Should he labour under an hereditary predisposition to insanity, or to suicidal delirium, a very trifling corporeal derangement may call into existence the self-destructive propensity, and vice versa. It will be our object to consider seriatim all the physical agents just enumerated.
Among the causes of suicide, the foggy climate of England has been brought prominently forward. The specious and inaccurate conclusions of Montesquieu on this point have misled the public mind. The climate of Holland is much more gloomy than that of England, and yet in that country suicide is by no means common. The reader will perceive from the following tabular statement that the popular notion of the month of November being the “suicide’s month” is founded on erroneous data.
The average number of suicides in each month, from 1817 to 1826, was as follows:—
| January | 213 |
| February | 218 |
| March | 275 |
| April | 374 |
| May | 328 |
| June | 336 |
| July | 301 |
| August | 296 |
| September | 246 |
| October | 198 |
| November | 131 |
| December | 217 |
| —— | |
| 3133 |
It has been clearly established that in all the European capitals, when anything approaching to correct statistical evidence can be procured, the maximum of suicide is in the months of June and July; the minimum in October and November. Temperature appears to exercise a much more decided influence than the circumstances of moisture and dryness, storms or serenity. M. Villeneuve has observed a warm, humid, and cloudy atmosphere to produce a marked bad effect at Paris; and that so long as the barometer indicated stormy weather, this effect continued.[44] Contrary, however, to the opinion of Villeneuve, it appears that by far the fewer number of suicides occur in the autumn and winter at Paris, than in the spring and summer.
Number of suicides for seven years.
| In Spring | 997 |
| In Summer | 933 |
| In Autumn | 627 |
| In Winter | 648 |