When reason is entirely awry, the acting up to the specific hallucination entertained is the sole object the patient has in view: regarding the means only, and not the consequence, he may jump from the house-top because he imagines he possesses the power of flying, and be killed; another leaps into the water, fancying he can walk on its surface, and is drowned; or, in the delirium of fever, the patient may step out of a window, not distinguishing it from a door, and break his neck. Such are not acts of suicide: the person is in a real delirium, and misjudges both the means and the end. The propensity to self-destruction is sometimes developed in a maniac from some fanatical religious hallucination or imagined supernatural inspiration. He may conceit he hears a voice calling upon him to sacrifice his own or another person's life, as an expiation; or that he has been visited by some blessed spirit or evil demon who commands it; or that he has some high destiny to fulfil, which prompts him to acts that inflict death. Self-destruction or homicide is not then the act of the will, and therefore can be deemed neither genuine suicide nor murder. The commission of suicide, except impelled by some violent and sudden cause, implies reflection and consciousness. It may proceed from a propensity long existing and cherished, or from a sudden impulse; but whether of old or recent date, whenever an hallucination of this sort is displayed, such patients demand the most vigilant watchfulness, lest they attempt to effect the destructive object to which their disordered minds are propelled. Errors and changes in matters of religious faith are most prolific sources of mental delusion and despondency (see Part I. Comm. II.), and consequently of suicide. The phrenzy of misplaced zeal, however, is not always limited to individuals, but seizes sometimes on multitudes, and produces epidemic suicide. Irreligion is a frequent source of suicide, true religion never. A Christian who believes in the rewards and punishments of a future life, and rushes deliberately into the presence of HIM by whom his conduct in a future as well as this state is to be judged, cannot be of sane mind when he commits an act which is in itself an heinous sin. But he who has no belief in a future state, and voluntarily sacrifices life to escape the punishment due to his delinquency, may commit suicide, and yet possess his intellects. entire; for the only consideration with him is to die and quit the scene of his calamities. A soldier may devote himself to certain death by leading a forlorn hope in battle; but he is prompted by the amor patriæ, the love of personal glory, or a sense of duty. This is the emanation of enthusiastic courage, not of insanity. But what is more relevant, a lunatic may entertain a specific delusion, and emulate the fast of forty days, and consequently die of famine; or adopt a penance, or inflict severe personal injury, as an expiation for some imaginary sin, and in its execution fall a voluntary sacrifice. In these cases, the motive is not a desire to quit life, but to acquire canonization in this world and immortality in the next. Three cases have occurred in my practice where the unhappy lunatic emasculated himself; but it proved fatal in no one. Matthew Lovatt, the Venetian shoemaker, first emasculated himself under some fanatical delusion. He recovered from the effects of this mad act. Afterwards he exhibited himself affixed to the front of his house, crucified, and crowned with thorns! Such acts may be those of a distempered mind, but they are not acts of suicide. I consider that a real act of suicide must be the impulse of a morbid operation of the functions of the brain. The actual condition of the mind under such a dreadful impression I shall not attempt to unravel. We may presume with the poet, that Between the acting of a dreadful thing The nature of an insurrection. Some meditate their exit from this world by any means rather than their own hands. They will perpetrate a murder which they calculate will forfeit their lives to the offended laws of GoD and man, and yet in selecting their victim prefer one who, from perfect innocence, they I conceive will find admission into heaven! Deans meditated the murder of a young woman to whom he was attached, because she rejected him. It appeared that he intended to commit this act because he was weary of life without her, rather than from a desire of revenge. Conceiving, therefore, that the sacrificing of an infant would be less wicked than killing a young woman who might have crimes to answer for, and an opportunity offering, he seized a child of four years old and cut its throat. Many murders have been perpetrated from a similar motive. I will quote one, as it still more forcibly illustrates this extravagant self-delusion: "About fifteen years ago a schoolmaster, residing in the north of the State of New York, perpetrated a similar murder. His fanaticism was still more extravagant. He thus reasoned:-if I die before I am well prepared, I shall doubtless go to hell; to avoid this terrible misfortune, the safest way is to get myself hanged: I shall at least have time to repent before my execution. To accomplish this I must commit a premeditated assassination, for our laws are so mild, that any less atrocious act will only subject me to a few years' imprisonment. But how must it be done? If I kill a sinner I send him straightway to hell. I must, therefore, kill a young person whose innocence will be a guarantee to me of his eternal beatification! Upon this he took his gun and shot a child only three years of age, and afterwards went voluntarily and delivered himself into the hands of justice. Care was taken to fulfil his desires. This fanatic belonged to the sect called Methodists."* I knew one, and have heard of two other persons, who destroyed themselves upon returning from the funeral of a friend who had committed suicide. We often hear of such acts committed instanter by low and illiterate people, who appear so to have done on the most trivial motives. Some leave a sort of apology for the act :-The Sieur Gillet, aged 75, hung himself; and near him was found, in his own hand-writing, the following apology for the deed he had accomplished. "Jesus Christ has said, that when a tree is old and can no longer bear fruit, it is good that it should be destroyed." He had previously several times attempted his life. It would be equally as vain to attempt tracing all the modes adopted to effect suicide, as to account for the motives prompting it. Without referring to the ancients or the dark ages, many instances occur in modern history of propensities to homicide and infanticide, as well as to suicide, which appear to result from no other cause than the force of example. In a late sitting of the French Academy of Medicine, several examples were reported by MM. Barbier, Marc, Bricheteau, Esquirol, Villermé, Bally, and Costel, completely establishing this fact. Esquirol+ mentioned six This case was published in the Gazette de France, as a commentary on the murder committed by Deans. + Medico-Chir. Journ. vol. ix. p. 226. cases occurring of persons being seized with the propensity to destroy their children since the trial of Madame Cornie for that crime. Costel related, in illustration, the more remarkable circumstance which occurred at the Hôtel des Invalides. A soldier having hung himself on a post, his example was followed in a very short time by twelve other invalid soldiers; and when this post was removed, the suicidical epidemic ceased. A gentleman told me that when at Malta, a few years after that island was taken possession of by the British, suicides became alarmingly common in a particular regiment. Every means was tried in vain to put a stop to it. At length the commandant resolved that the body of the next suicide should be denied Christian burial, and be treated with every indignity. The opportunity soon offered. Another suicide occurred. The regiment was drawn out, the corpse was stripped naked, placed on a hurdle, and dragged with every mark of ignominy, and thrown into the fosse. The effect was the same as upon the Milesian virgins and the French invalids,-there were no more suicides. This may be cited as an instance of epidemic tadium vita. Primrose relates, that the women of Lyons were seized with a propensity to suicide by throwing themselves down the wells of that city. Thirteen hundred people destroyed themselves at Versailles in 1793; and in 1806, epidemic suicide was rife in Rouen during the months of June and July, when sixty destroyed themselves. In 1813, in the little village of St. Pierre Monjau, in the Valais, one woman hung herself; many others followed her example; and had it not been for the interposition of the civil authorities, the contagion would have spread. There is also a favourite method or a fashion in the choice of death sometimes prevailing. When a person of note has rushed on a voluntary |