Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-03-16


swered, drawing his chair nearer to me
'and,' lowering his voice, ito ask you one
question as friend and Gcd-fearing man,
and to which pray you to give me plain
yes or no.
$50 on -
"tFeeling as 1 feel, shall be justified be-
fore God in taking my own life? VIII it be
deadly sin for me to do for myself what !
l would do to mad dog?
81 repeat his words almost as he spoke
them. l cannot give you the faintest idea
of the solemn elaboration with which he
put this awful question. For some mo-
ments could not say a word. Then /
started I'D and told him that l would not
answer him yes or no-that it was not fair
to task me to take such responsibility.
Then he rose, too, and said that he must re-
solve it for himself, and saw plainly which
way it would go.
@'Give me till tomorrow to think i. OUT
said, OBTAINING him.
"sTo. morrow may be too late,' be re-
piled. The fit may come upon me tonight
for all l know
"tCome home with me; Pm not afraid.
You won't hurt me- l said.
so would try very hard not TO do So
hAOh oSAAs SNA~NNS NANSS ~
self. Don't you trust me-
"I will trust you; but I'll do more. You
are not armed, l suppose?"
"sNo,' he replied, with shudder, mot
now
"I'll take care that you shall not be, and
I'll carry my Derringer in my pocket. On
the first indication of homicidal mania
give you my word I'll shoot-and I'll shoot
STRAIGHT
"I sale this to satisfy him, poor fellow!
In bis weak state | could have laid him
down like a child. 1t did satisfy him,
and we went home together. l led him to
talk of our old soldering days, and gradu-
ally got him back to his wound. l made
him describe the first sensations of pain In
his head, and repeat all that his different
medical advisers had said. l happened to
have strong preparation of hasheesh by
me. | gave him dose, and whilst under
its influence carefully examined his head.
Now the head, you must know, does not
fatten or waste away in proportion to other
partssof the body. Still his had become
mere skin and bone; and this state, perhaps,
gave me an advantage over others who had
made the same examination. At last felt,
or thought l felt, faint twitching-a sort
Vi WV 1LI1lOo
above the left ear. II might be merely
nervous, but it might be caused by the ball.
81 then set my mind to work, and thought
the whole case over steadily. In the first
place was that impulse to take human life,
of which my poor friend had spoken, really
uncontrollable. For example, suppose that
one day be did take pistol 'on purpose
and 90 to that young lady's garden-would
H. lor m fhof fha
mind never changes its purpose, or turns
from the fell completion of its purpose, is
to say in other words that the insane mind
is stronger than the sane mind. If a man
with freshly broken leg were to tell you
he was going to run foot-race, you would
not believe him, because your common
sense revol.s against the idea of his running
with a leg disabled. But if one with his
brain disabled declares that he is going to
do something dependent upon the action of
his mind, common sense does not always
argue so well.
ain the second place, did my poor friend,
with bis impaired means of judgment, be-
lieve that the impulse was uncomfortable?
Because ifhe die, the end would be the same,
so far as he was concerned. He would
sacrifice his own life TO protect that of
OJueIe, bnougA bHOy "0hS IA hO 0OSoal
danger.
an the third place, might not this story
of the impulse be a mere pretense to ex-
cuse the commission of suicide? Now,
there are no forms of madness more OBJ
scure in their origin, more difficult to de-
tect, more persistent, and more fatal than
suicidal mania; and as there have been nu-
merous cases in which persons who have
tbo,,aaalras haV EY,Ilv
pared evidence tending to show that their
death was accidental, why should there not
be one in which the fatal act was to be ESQ
far as possible) justified?
"In the fourth place. granting that there
was either real homicidal mania or fancied
homcidal mania tending to suicidal, or
simply the latter-was there any possibility
of cure?
s'As the three first questions rested for
their solution on one set of facts, and the
deductions to be drawn therefrom, L con-
slider them together. A victim of suicidal
mania rarely if ever speaks .ot suicide.
When man says he is going to drown
himself you may generally direct him to
the cars which will take him to the river
side with the fullest conviction that
he will not breakfast with crabs. If, in an
exceptional case, suicide is mentioned, it
will either be treated lightly, as an act that
il not crime, or the patient will be very
earnest in his assurances that he would
never commit it. Remembering my poor
friends manner, l noticed that he spoke of
taking his life with much more emotion
than he evinced when he told me of the
impulse to shed the blood of others. His
words, Il must have human life-if had
had pistol with me, should have shot
her-I should murder my keeper and go
straight for that innocent girl" were spoken
as calmly as though he said Il owe five dol
Iars-I must go and pay them,' and at the
same time with tone of deep commlser-
alton for the predestined vicsims. They
were to die for no fault of their own, but
they were doomed TO deatE-if he lived.
When, on the other hand he spoke OF say
ing their lives at the sacrifice OF bis own,
his manner changed. No one afflicted with
suicidal mania ever treated self-destruction
with the horror, the consciousness of its
Tickedness, and the religious doubts as to