The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-01-07
SCIENTIST STUDIES
 THE ARTOF SUICIDE
cAR5oLIc ACID IN AMERICA, STRYCHNlNE IN ENGLAND, sNAkE-BITES IN INDIA USED TO END EXIST ENCE.
From the New York World.

From the New York World.
 Prof. DOrsay Paille, member of an odd and little known scientific society in Paris. societe pour Rechercher les Causes Phy- chologique de la Suicide (Sooiety for the Investigation of the Psychological Causes of Suicide), and fellow of a similar or- ganization in Vienna, will sail for Havre armed with a mass of statistics which he has gathered in & three months tour of the United States and which ended with an inspection of the records of the Bureau of Vital Statistics in this city. | Professor PaiIle has devoted three years to an investigation in different countries. His conclusion is that America now goes beyond France in proportion to popula- ton in the number of cases of sef-de- struction While he finds poverty and de- 1 spondency the principal causes he be- lieves the high tension under which all classes live is in the main responsible.
 "The most remarkable aspect that ap- pealed to me-" said Professor Paille, lis the method used in the majority of cases, and especially by women. You have more suicides in this country by carbolic acid than in France and Great Britain combined. Fewer women kill themselves 1 by drowning than by any other means. That is one of the favorite means em- l ployed by women in England, but nearly always in summer. In winter the favor ! ite method is by hanging or by swift poison. like strychnine or prussic acid. While these toxic agents are much more difficult to obtain in England than in this country-almost impossible, might say-it is a fact that self-sought death by poison Is commoner in large ItrI, att awttn orlt iY. 6a l Black Country than it is here. The same l is true of France. More women shoot themselves and hang themselves In Ger many than in any other European coun- l try. Suicide by any method is compara- 1 lively rare in Ireland and Is almost un- known in the agricultural districts. Dub- lin and other cities whose population ex- ceeds 40,O00 furnish the largest propor- tion, but even in these centers the ratio
 is far below the records of cities of the same size in other parts of the United l Kingdom.
 Sweden and Norway have fewer sui cides than any of the northern countries. In the Latin nations France leads. Italy l comes next and Spain last, with poison as the favorite weapon, but nowhere Is carbolc acid used to the extent 1t Is in the United States
 Tn tho course of my investigations I have travelled through Asia, Africa, Aus tralia, China and Japan. The Ethiopian rarely ever takes his own life. The As iatic. speaking broadly, is a fatalist, and 1t is curious fact that thousands of natives of India are predestined to kill themselves. In the Rhampoor district it is not infrequent for the man who wants to die by his own hand to have himself bitten by snake whose strike means speedy and certain death. There are families in Bombay and Calcutta who have had suicides through generations and invariably by snake bite.
 One of the curious things in connec- tion with this inquiry Is that in the twenty thousand cases I have inquired Into only four were by electricity, and this is all the more extraordinary when you consider that in every city in the world there exists the means to end life by that medium without expense and to be certain that death will be instantan- eous."