SUICIDES IN RUSSIA.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1761, 25 June 1886, Page 5

SUICIDES IN RUSSIA.

Tbe great advance which, has taken place of late years in the number of suicides in Russia has occasioned some interesting discussion as to its causes, which are variously assigned to be tho growth of pessimism, changed economic conditions, and increasing tendencies to drunkenness and madnesp. Upholders of the first position point to the fact that, whereas up to 1864 the suicides in St Petersburg reached only anaverage of 50 a year, the returns now show 206 suicides per million inhabitants, a number whi.^.h is exceeded in no other European, capital but the home of modern pessimism — Paris: there the proportion stands at the enormous figure of 402 per million, while in Berlin it is 170, and only 87 in London. The economists argue that in the ten past years the price of meat in St Petersburg, has become 20 per cent, dearer, and lodging 35 per cent., but this is hardly enough to account for an increase of 300 per cent, in suicides); and the doctors show that half the suicides are drunk when they die, and that lunacy has advanced with equal strides. In reality all the three causes probably overlap, or lead up to one another, but none of them can be very easily removed, and the effects are most lamentable.