TÆDIUM-VITÆ, THE PASSIONS, MISERY AND DESPAIR.
Life weariness was the suicide cause, which French authors supposed to
be excited in English people by their climate; and in like manner to
their error in attributing a heavier suicide rate to England than to
their own country; they erred in assigning tædium vitæ as a fertile
suicide cause in England. Modern observations disclose but very few
English suicides due to this influence; we islanders require as a
rule a stronger stimulus than this one to induce us to terminate our
existences. Misery and despair cause a very large number of cases;
and so do our passions, yet the passions do not cause so large a
percentage as in hotter countries; along the Mediterranean coast, where
a sub-tropical climate exists, the vices and license of the passions
are a more fruitful cause than in our temperate clime.
Tædium vitæ, disgust of life, is not often a simple weariness, not
at least as a suicide cause; it is either profound sorrow produced
by a very real and serious loss, or else it is the effect of satiety
following the abuse of pleasure; still it is occasionally seen in men
and women who have no object in life, and no need of exertion, and in
whom even the daily task of finding something to pass away the time is
too onerous.
Tissot cites the cases of Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido, Sappho, Phyllis,
Alcyon, Portia, Anthony, Cleopatra and Arria, as examples of suicide
caused by unrestrained passions; and many modern instances are
described in Forbes Winslow’s Anatomy of Suicide. Jealousy and
disappointment in love affairs do not cause so many voluntary deaths
as is commonly supposed; and I think it probable that the suicides of
lovers are often caused partly by a desire to punish the offending ones
by the regretful feelings which the death of a once-loved person must
excite; and such vengeance is not without a certain sweetness to some
persons’ minds.
Curiously enough envy also has been assigned as the cause of a person’s
voluntary death, although it is not clear what consolation this can
offer.
The spirit of vindictiveness is, I regret to be obliged to say, a
rather fertile cause in this country; for example, Dr. Danford Thomas
narrates that a servant maid, a few years ago, in Central Middlesex,
having been blamed for her negligence, was given a month’s notice to
leave; she asked permission to go out, it was granted; she went out and
bought a piece of rope; the same evening she was found hanging in her
bedroom.
In the same district, and about the same time, a young woman-servant
strangled herself with a neck scarf to spite her mistress, who had
scolded her for breakages due to carelessness. In each of these cases
the clear opinion of both Coroner and jury was that a feeling of spite
was the only prompter of the act.
Several worthy members of the medical profession have sought in suicide
a refuge from the mental pain and anxiety caused by unjust accusations;
a doctor is desperately liable to such charges, which are usually
brought for the purpose of extorting money, or for revenge.
There was a sad example in 1865 of a surgeon at Salisbury, and one two
years ago at Hounslow; and since then at Kensington a much respected
medical practitioner stooped to self-destruction when a criminal charge
was brought against him, which subsequent investigation showed to be
without the legal and medical facts necessary to support it.
I believe that if a calculation could be made of the _proximate_
causes of suicide in England, the most common causes would be found
to be misery, despair of success in life, and remorse for crimes,
misdemeanours and follies.
In concluding the consideration of causation, I remark that Morselli
and others have said, that in the ancient world political fanaticism
had its era for causing men to end their lives; in the Middle Ages
religious fanaticism held its sway as a cause of suicide; and I should
add that in modern times it is the high pressure at which we live, the
difficulty of obtaining a livelihood, and the forced education of the
young, which fills our asylums and swells our voluntary death-rate.