In the Lunatic Asylum of Hanwell I have now under my care 265 males, and 351 females.
It has long been a current opinion that madness is a more common disease in our country than any where else. This may possibly arise from the greater number of our eccentric countrymen that are widely scattered over the globe; and whenever an individual is observed whose manners and conduct are totally at variance with the habits of any other member of the community, he is generally considered an Englishman. Voltaire came to the sweeping conclusion that one half of the nation was scrofulous, and the other moiety insane.
However, it would appear that insanity is on the increase; for in the report of the commissioners for licensing lunatic establishments we find the following statement: “Insanity appears to have been considerably on the increase; for if we compare the sums of two distant lustra, the one beginning with 1775, and the other ending with 1809, the proportion of patients returned as having been received into lunatic asylums during the latter period, is to that of the former nearly as one hundred and twenty-nine to one hundred.” Dr. Burrows has endeavoured to impugn the correctness of this statement by proving that suicide is more frequent in other countries; now, unless Dr. Burrows can prove that suicide is always an act of insanity, which will by no means be admitted, his observation can bear no weight.
It is but too true that in melancholy madness we often observe a prevailing propensity to self-destruction. Dr. Abercrombie’s views on this subject are so luminous that I shall transcribe them.
“When the melancholic hallucination has fully taken possession of the mind, it becomes the sole object of attention, without the power of varying the impression, or of directing the thoughts to any facts or considerations calculated to remove or palliate it. The evil seems overwhelming and irremediable, admitting neither of palliation, consolation, nor hope. For the process of mind calculated to diminish such an impression, or even to produce a hope of the palliation of the evil, is precisely that exercise of mind which in this singular condition, is lost or suspended; namely, a power of changing the subject of thought, of transferring the attention to other facts and considerations, and of comparing the mental impression with these, and with the actual state of external things. Under such a conviction of overwhelming and hopeless misery, the feeling naturally arises of life being a burden, and this is succeeded by a determination to quit it. When such an association has once been formed, it also fixes itself upon the mind, and fails to be corrected by those considerations which ought to remove it. That it is in this manner the impression arises, and not from any process analogous to the determination of a sound mind, appears, among other circumstances, from the singular manner in which it is often dissipated, namely by the accidental productions of some new impression not calculated in any degree to influence the subject of thought, but simply to give a momentary direction of the mind to some other feeling. Thus a man mentioned by Pinel had left his house in the night, with the determined resolution of drowning himself, when he was attacked by robbers. He did his best to escape from them, and having done so, returned home, the resolution of suicide being entirely dissipated. A woman mentioned, I believe by Dr. Burrows, had her resolution changed in the same manner, by something falling on her head, after she had gone out for a similar purpose.
“A very irregular modification occurs in some of these cases. With the earnest desire of death, there is combined an impression of the criminality of suicide; but this instead of correcting the hallucination, only leads to another and most extraordinary mode of effecting the purpose; namely by committing murder, and so dying by the hand of justice. Several instances are on record in which this remarkable mental process was distinctly traced and acknowledged; and in which there was no mixture of malice against the individuals who were murdered. On the contrary, these were generally children; and in one of the cases, the maniac distinctly avowed his resolution to commit murder, with the view of dying by a sentence of law; and at the same time his determination that his victim should be a child, as he should thus avoid the additional guilt of sending a person out of the world in a state of unrepented sin. The mental process in such a case presents a most interesting subject of reflection. It appears to be purely a process of association, without the power of reasoning. I should suppose that there had been at a former period, during a comparatively healthy state of the mental faculties, a repeated contemplation of suicide which had been always checked by an immediate contemplation of its dreadful criminality.
In this manner a strong connexion had been formed, which when the idea of suicide afterwards came into the mind, during the state of insanity, led to the impression of its heinousness, not by a process of reasoning, but by simple association. The subsequent steps are the distorted reasonings of insanity, mixed with some previous impression of the safe condition of children dying in infancy. This explanation I think is strongly countenanced by the consideration that, had the idea of the criminality of suicide been in any degree a process of reasoning, a corresponding conviction of the guilt of murder must have followed it. I find, however, one case which is at variance with this hypothesis. The reasoning of that unfortunate individual was, that if he committed murder, and died by the hand of justice, there would be time for his making his peace with the almighty between the crime and his execution, which would not be the case if he should die by suicide. This was a species of reasoning but it was purely the reasoning of insanity.”
Still these remarks do not go to prove that suicide is always the result of insanity, since it can in most instances be attributed to a moment of despair and impatience under a heavy visitation of calamity, or the dread of contempt of society. The frequency of this rash act, cannot therefore be adduced as a proof of the greater prevalence of madness in any country. With greater reason, self-destruction is to be referred to the want of a proper religious education and feeling, which will enable man to bear up against the world’s vicissitudes, and deem life a more or less painful journey to a peaceful abode.
Montesquieu was one of the many writers who attributed this propensity as being nearly exclusive to the English. “Les Anglais,” he says, “se tuent sans qu’on puisse imaginer aucune raison qui les y détermine; ils se tuent dans le sens même du bonheur. Cette action, chez les Romains était l’effet de l’éducation, elle tenait à leur manière de penser et à leurs coutumes; dans les Anglais c’est l’effet d’une maladie, elle tient à l’état physique de la machine.”
Two very curious works on suicide have been lately published in Germany by Dr. Arntzenius and Dr. Schlegel. The former writer divides this fatal propensity into acute and chronic; the first marked by great physical excitement, the latter accompanied or preceded by sadness, moroseness, and love of solitude. Curious cases are related in illustration of this doctrine, amongst others we remark that of an English nobleman who cast himself into the crater of Vesuvius. A German in the same year, not being able perhaps to travel so far, threw himself into a smelting furnace. Several cases are recorded of individuals who formed the desperate resolution of starving themselves. It appears that in many instances the most trifling circumstance has driven these reckless beings to the commission of this desperate action. The case of a young Parisian author of the name of Escoupe, who suffocated himself because one of his dramatic productions had been severely criticised, is well known. A German student destroyed himself because he had a club-foot, and another youth put an end to his existence in consequence of his not having been allowed to put on his Sunday clothes. Dr. Schlegel has given a curious table of the means of destruction resorted to according to the several ages of individuals, and we give the following abstract: