Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1927. REMARKABLE EPIDEMIC

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1927. REMARKABLE EPIDEMIC

The epidemics of suicide which have been reported from both the main divisions of the American Continent within the last fortnight differ widely in their range and their circumstances, but agree in defying even plausible* 1 explanation. In the United States, with a population of 120,000,000 and a suicide rate of about 1000 a month, the twenty cases reported to have occurred during the last eight or nine weeks represent in number not more than one per cent, of the normal average.'But in kind they are so extraordinary that they have shocked a nation in which human life is held exceptionally cheap. Suicide is, generally speaking, the resort of the elderly and the infirm, of the sick and the sorrowful, of those who are broken in body or estate oo»both. But this American epidemic has attracted attention out of all proportion to the number of its victims because they have all belonged to the wealthy or well-to-do classes and have all been university or high school students ranging between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three. In the Argentine the epidemic has been on a much larger, scale and quite undiscriminating in its incidence. With no respect for age or class, it has claimed 300 victims in the course^ of four months, 15 of them in a single day, and in every case the agency has been the same kind of poison. The newspapers are being blamed for the encouragement which their publicity has provided, and the police are urging them "to give suicides less space"—a .highly desirable limitation in a matter where example^ notoriety, and a morbid vanity count for so much. There are fashions in crimes and also in poisons, and free advertisement and unrestricted sale may help in spreading them. But these are merely matters of aggravation. What the origin of the trouble in the Argentine may be is as obscure as in; the.case of less abominable fashions.

In the United States the twenty student suicides, eleven of which occurred in one week, have naturally provoked much speculation, But the explanations suggested do not carry us very far. "The so-called jazz age and a lack of beneficent parental; influence and religious training" are general causes of demoralisation which, from the immense prosperity of the country and the intimate association of liberty arid lawlessness in its traditions, have doubtless acquired a special force in the United States. The home has been described by Miss Maude Royden' as the best thing that man has invented, but in this age man has'sought out many other inventions which have displaced the supremacy of the home. The-Jies- of the family and of religion have been weakened by the motor-car and by other luxuries which, like it, have been transformed into necessaries. The process has been accelerated by the influence of science on the speculative side and by the unrest and demoralisation which followed in the wake of the War. In all these unfortunate tendencies the wealth, the enterprise, and the hustle of America have endowed her with an exceptionally liberal share. She leads the world not only in commerce and industry, in millionaires arid automobiles, and in the wide diffusion of comforts and even of luxuries, but also in the contempt" of legal and social restraint and in the excesses of the spirit of jazz. That these defects of America's qualities must also affect her universities, her schools, and even her nurseries, was inevitable.

Thursday brought us the report of the Mayoral in Chicago in which three election officials were kidnapped, one shot four times, twenty-six men and a quantity of revolvers and machine-guns were captured in a party raid, and "police armed with machine-guns, 60 squads of detectives, thousands of watchers, and special guards were unable to cope with the situation." On the same day the climax of the students' suicide epidemic was also reported. It was a strange, and if the diagnoses supplied in the same message were correct, a deeply significant collocation. And yet the spirit of jazz and the weakening of home influence, arid religious training, though doubtless potent causes of demoralisation, do not seem capable of bearing all the weight that the experts of education and religion seek to place upon it. Suicide between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three is not a common or a natural outcome of even the laxest discipline or the most riotous living. Excesses of any kind may obviously provide a predisposing cause at any age, hut the immediate. impulse in each of these cases must surely have a more specific origin. The student who left a message that he was "going on a glorious adventure" rather suggests the pose in which men liked to stage their exit when, as in the days of the Roman Empire, suicide was fashionable and respectable. Other explanations given by these American students do not amount to much. One "believed he would become a burden"; another was "tired of life"; a third feared he would

lose his mind. The example of others was probably a potent cause with mosit of them.

Referring to the "apparently sane but perhaps really neurasthenic whose suicides have a motive but an inadequate one," Professor Rose writes as follows in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics":—

Suicides of this kind sometimes amount to a sort of epidemic. When one member of a family has ended his life the recurrence of the anniversary of his death, the sight of the weapon that he used, or some such casual association has been known to drive a relative to follow his example, until as many as seven of one household have died by their own hands. Larger epidemics, extending: through an entire city, or Wen wider, have not been unknown in ancient or 'modern times, and are frequently associated with religious mania. These are probably hysterical, as hysteria is^easily communicated and often produces, especially among women, "theatrical attempts at suicide." The most striking of the ancient examples to which Professor Rose refers occurred at Miletus, and is recorded by Plutarch as follows:—

A certain dreadful and monstrous distemper did seize the Milesian maids, arising from some .hidden cause. It is most likely the air" had acquired some infatuating and venomous quality that did influence them to this change and alienation of mind; for all on a sudden an earnest longing for death with furious attempts to hang themselves, did^ attack them, and many did privily accomplish it. The arguments and tears of parents and the persuasion of friends availed nothing, but they circumvented their keepers in all their contrivances*and industry to pro-' vent them,-still mui-deriug themselves. And the calamity, seemed to be an'extraordinary divine stroke and beyond human help, until by the counsel of a wise man a decree of th Senate was passed, enacting that those maids who hanged themselves should be crried naked through the market-place. The passage of this law not only inhibited but qUashed their desire of slayine themselves. Note what a great argument of gooa nature and virtue this fear of disgrace is; for they'who had no dread upon them of the most terrible things in the world, death and pain could not abide tho imagination clef Sll^ eXPOSUre t0 Shame

It was presumably his "appreciation or the prospective and posthumous modesty of these Milesian maidens that induced Plutarch to include this remarkable case in a treatise "On the Virtues of Women," And have we much bettered his philosophy? He guesses that the "dreadful and monstrous distemper, may have been due to "some infatuating and venomous quality" in the air, but irankly confesses that the actual cause was "hidden." We also guess, but are at greater pains to conceal our ignorance. Let us hope that the people of the United States and Argentina may be as successful as those of Miletus in devisin°- a / .