Suicides among the young are especially prev alent in the great centres. The professional and commercial elasses are more prone to suicide than are others; artisans evince higher rates than do laborers; while among soldiers and criminals the rates are extremely high. The rates for summer or late spring are always much above those for the other seasons, the maximum usually occurring between April and July, the minimum in January or December. The early part of each month and the early days of the week show a relative preponderance. Other in teresting correlations appear in the methods by which suicide is accomplished. In the aggre gate the order of preference in method is: Hang ing, drowning, shooting, cutting or stabbing, fall ing from a height, and asphyxiation or poison. In cold countries drowning is naturally less favored than in the south; the use of firearms is specially prominent in Italy; of cutting or stabbing in Prussia; of poison in England. As would be expected, female suicides employ fire arms less than male. In England drowning is the recorded means for more than a quarter of the women committing suicide, and poison for about a seventh; hut only 15 per cent. of male suicides drown themselves, and only a twelfth use poison.
The study of the motives to suicide can be more successfully pursued by psychologists and physicians than by the statistician. Definite mental disorders usually appear as the direct cause of a third of all suicides, but a very much larger proportion of cases show evidence of mental or physical abnormality. Suicidal ten
dency, like insanity, has been observed to be inherited. Alcoholism is a frequent cause. Em phasis upon biological influences has led some writers to regard suicide as always being, like certain diseases, a specific tendency of the indi vidual. But the social causes of suicide are not to be underestimated. Imitation and the desire for notoriety undoubtedly affect suicides, and though perhaps too much stress has been laid upon the influence and the hurry and strain of modern business, there can he no doubt that many contemporary conditions which stimu late suicide, especially in great cities, are, like the predisposing causes of alcoholism, largely under social control.
Consult: :MorseIli, Suicide, International Sci entific Series (New York, 1532). a standard work; Legoyt, Le suicide ancien et moderne (Paris, 1SS1) ; Geiger, Der Selbstmord inn l:las sischen Alterthunt (Augsburg, 1858) ; Motta, Bibliografia dcl suicido (Bellinzona, 1590) ; Dlirkheim, Le suicide (Paris, 1897) : Twelfth United States Census (vol. iii.) ; Registration Reports issued by all New England States and by several other States and cities; Ameri can Statistical Association Publications; Re ports of the Registrar-General of the United Kingdom; Statistisches Jahrbuelt fair das Deutsche Reich (annual) ; Annuaire statistique de la France.