SUICIDE is the term usually applied both to the act of self destruction and to him who commits it. As a subject of medical investigation, the most important distinctions among cases of suicide are founded on the circumstances which lead to its commission ; and of these there are two chief classes : in one, a man is led to disregard his life for the sake of something for which his death is necessary ; in the other, he is depressed by an evil more intolerable than the act of dying. But whichever of these be the motive, it may act in two different ways, and the suicide may be, as M. Esquire] has said, either acute and involuntary, or chronic and prepense. Or, again, suicides of all kinds may be divided (and this is probably the most practical method) according to the condition of the mind which has preceded the act, and which in each case constitutes the disposition to self destruction.
In many cases this disposition is only a part of the general perversion of the judgment in complete insanity : it thus exists in certain maniacs in combination with many other signs of a diseased mind. Some arc merely melancholy ; some are carried on by illusions which lead them, as if unintentionally, to suicide; some have sensations which they imagine may be cured by such violence as proves fatal f some are driven to the act by commands which they imagine they have received ; some destroy themselves at the commencement of insanity, when they are conscious of the malady which threatens them ; others, in their convalescence, in horror at the excesses which they hare committed, or at the mere thought of having been deranged.
There are also cases of monomania in which almost, the only indica tion of insanity is the desire for self-destruction, excited by an illusion respecting sonic melancholy event, or by some fancied command. A peculiar and very terrible variety of this monomania, is that in the desire for destruction leads the patient to take the lives of others, against whom he bears no ill-will, before he attempts his own.
Many instances of this homicidal monomania, as it is called, arc recorded.
There are conditions of the mind which are not called insanity (in the ordinary acceptation of the term), but which do not leas strongly predispose to suicide. Such is especially that named ennui, or :tedium ram, for which, though it is thought by foreigners to be so common in that Sauvagea has called it "melancholia Anglica," we have in our language no term except the very inexpressive one, spleen. Many circumstances give rise to this state of mind ; most commonly it is the consequence of a want of occupation, or of a sudden transition from a state of active exertion iu business or in pleasure, to one of voluntary or compelled repose ; or it results from the difficulty which those who have long lived in the excitement of frivolous pursuits find in main taining it by new objects of desire.
The state of the hypochondriac, though of somewhat the same kind, is less dangerous. lie is persuaded indeed that his suffering are irre mediable, and that death would be a great relief to him ; ho even often talks of committing suicide; but ho is as irresolute in the use of the meana of death as lie is anxious in the use of those for prolonging life ; and if he do at last, after repeated postponements, attempt to destroy himself, the attempt is generally, through want of determination, abortive, and he again sinks into the same despondency and inactivity.
In all these cases the suicide is of the chronic or prepense kind ; and in all, the condition of mind which precedes it is connected with a perversion of the judgment so obvious, that no reasonable person could hesitate to regard it as insanity. Whatever ingenuity of plan may have been shown in the preparation for the act, very few persons would deny that, under similar external circumstances, it would not have been committed by a sane man ; and this is true of the great majority of prepense suicides in the present day.