Scotland shows a high female rate.
The present proportions of the European countries are: France, 79 to 21; Italy, 80 to 20; Prussia, 82 to 18; Spain, 71 to 29; Saxony, 77 to 23; Russia, 80 to 20; Holland, 78 to 22; Ireland, 78 to 22; and Scotland, 72 to 28.
For the United States of America, the estimated numbers are 79·25 to 20·75.
For the English colonists in Australia, 82 to 18 is the estimated proportion.
As an illustration of the trifling causes which sometimes lead to the act, I may mention that Drs. Georget and Falret have both stated in medical journals that French women have frequently committed suicide, only because they have happened to lose their personal charms of appearance.─Burrows.
The female sex contributes a considerable number of cases dependent on child-birth; these are of two classes: suicide during the course of the mental failure, the puerperal mania, so well known to occur at times in pregnancy and after parturition; and those saddening cases of self-destruction occurring as a sequence to the mental anxiety and shame, depending on pregnancy and child-birth in single women, who are constantly being seduced under promise either of marriage, or at least of maintenance, and then deserted by men whose malevolence is only equalled by their lust.
Simple hysteria is also the cause of a small percentage of female suicides; the amatory passion being usually primarily at fault.
Age.
In a calculation including the greater part of Europe, the effect of age is found to be such that the proportion of suicide increases from childhood up to about fifty-five years of age, and then declines very uniformly.
The largest numbers occur in the years between forty and fifty.