SLEEPLESSNESS AND SUICIDE.

If anything can excuse suicide it Is Bleapiesaness. A jary of ci liege masters and Eton residents the other day decided that Dr Philip Herbert Carpenter Science Master at Eton, hai kil'ed himself by the adminißbration of chloroform while suffering from temporary Insanity. It wai given ia evidence that Dr Carpenter had been a martyr to sleeplessness. The dsceaßed gantleman had had a severe attack of influenza, and this had been followed by great reatleßsness and want of sleep ; both of which condition! indicated a distressing exhaustion of the ntrvous system. Dr Carpanter visited the Isle of Wight, and improved decidedly in health, but he appears to have retorned to hla work too soon, for he had scarcely well begun when sleep 4 again deserted him. On. walking to the school he said he felt hh brain reeling, and that he had no sleep. Indlges- ( t on, probably partly the caiue and part y the effect- of his insomnia, added lta toi- . ments- tb. Dr Carpenter's mind . He grew desperate, and in a moment of frei zled despair destroyed himself. He was but; thirty-nine years of age, and ha 3 left a

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widow and four young children. This Ia the kind of tragedy that modern times produoas. it all oomeß ultimately from too much work on the brain and too.little work on the muscular system ! Have doctors, schoolmasters, and university profesacra ever considered the fact that horaea and cattfe dogs and otl er animals pract lcally never suffer from insomnia? Of course when attacked by aoule d sease or experiencing sharp pains, they ara wakeful ; but at ordinary times sleeple sness is a thing unknown amor gat them. Th« farm laborer and the navvy are like the horse and the djg — they do not in a regular way know what • leeplessness ie Now i 3 it not the case th it both science and culture ought to diminish for us the ills of life, not to increase them ? Culture and science that prodnca among the cultured and scientific classes, a wide range of ills, like sleeplessness and dyspepsia, are not benefits but injuries. They do not mark r:al progress, but retrogression. — The Hospital.