inations for floating kidney,-gastroptosis and enteroptosis. The digestive disturbance is usually chronic, and is accom. panied by intestinal fermentation, flatulence, and often by a chronic mucous entercolitis, which he considers a neurosis, a reflected nervous disease extending through Auerbach's or Meissner's plexus. The dragging pain in the loin, extending down to the groin and into the thigh of the affected side, he finds is the most frequent and characteristic symptom, and directly referable to change of position of the mobile kidney. The severity of the nervous symp toms depends upon the degree of mobility of the kidney, and are chiefly restlessness, insomnia, cardiac palpitation, and symptoms of profound nervous exhaustion.

MEDICO-LEGAL NEUROLOGY.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF SUICIDE.-By L. J. Rosenberg, L. L. B., and N. E. Aronstam, M. D., Detroit, Mich., members of the Medico-Legal Society. all times and among all peoples there have been men who have by their own free act and deed put an end to their terrestrial existence. Among the Brahmans and Buddhists suicide was prevalent, their religious doctrines favoring, nay even encouraging it. They regarded terrestrial existence as a mere threshold to a more blessed region; hence dissolution was an object most desirable to attain. In early Egypt, too, suicide was not uncommon; indeed, it was frequently regarded even honorable. Thus, when Rameses the Great became blind he deliberately curtailed his earthly career. Among the Jews suicide was very little practiced. Inasmuch as the doctrine of a future world was hardly known among the ancient Hebrews, they endeavored to make the most and the best of this world. Thus, the Pentateuch only relates four instan.es of suicide: Sampson, Saul and his armor-bearer, and Ahithophel. In old Greece, when art and esthetics were flourishing, suicide was of very rare oc currence. Later, however, with the advent of the schools of the Cynics, many of the best minds of Greece were

poisoned with the desire of self-destruction.

Stelpo, Di

ogenes, Menedimas, Anesicratus, Deinonax and Peragrinus died by their own hand. With the stoics and epicureans the practice of suicide became still more in vogue. Zeno, Demosthenes, Clientes, and their disciples, all voluntarily terminated their lives.

In Rome suicide was popular. Seneca and Cato not only advocated but also practiced it. Brutus, Cassius, Lucian, Mark Antony, Nero, and many others of historic fame, all entered the subterranean precincts of Pluto on their own accord.

The Christians of the early centuries, in order to escape torture and persecution, and also frequently to hasten their entrance to the celestial kingdom, so that they might enjoy the gift of heaven, had recourse to suicide. Again, some-because of an impulse to become martyrs of their faith-resorted to suicide as a means to attain the desired end.

The causes and reasons of suicide are varied and numerous; yet, multitudinous and complex as they may seem, they can be classified in two divisions; (1) Pseudosuicide; (2) genuine suicide.

By pseudo-suicide we mean all those suicides committed rationally. These are usually executed for one or two reasons: either to gain something more precious than our earthly existence, or to escape misery and torture far worse than death. Of this class were most of the suicides perpetrated by the ancients.

Genuine suicide denotes all those cases where reason was hardly consulted. To this class belong fully eighty per cent of the modern suicides. The average case of presentday self-destruction is not because of sacrifice, so that others may profit by the individual's death, nor is it because of persecution or intolerable fortune, but because of some inherent tendency or a suicidal predisposition to which the slightest exciting cause is all-sufficient for its occurrence.

Statistics and statisticans prove in cold figures that suicide is on the increase. The complexity of demands which our civilization puts upon man, and the difficulty of the at

tainments of those demands, weaken the vis resistentiae to such an extent as to oreate permanent lesions in our physical organism, conducive to a fluctuation in the domain of violation. To speak with Marselli: "The progressive increase of suicide is not possible to explain otherwise than as an effect of that universal and complex influence to which we give the name of civilization."

The desire to live pervades all organic life-both animal and vegetable. The instinct of self-preservation governs man even in the very face of death; not alone is this instinct implanted in the individual, but also in the class; not only in this class, but also in the species. Hence genuine suicide is but a tacit indication of the inaptitude to live; it is a process of segregation, ridding us of the unfit.

This method of natural elimination acts in obedience to the law of heredity. Heredity is an all powerful factor in the

establishment of a soil, favorable to the growth of many a morbidity. This soil has been considered by all pathologists as the abode of predisposition on the part of the individual. To speak with a contemporaneous writer on the subject, it is a soil prepared by ages, cultivated by generations, and susceptible to the reception of a germinative material, which soon develops in full bloom and blossom, bearing in its pods the seed of destruction and extermination.

The disposition to suicide has been derived from a long distant past; it has lived upon the very blood of our ancestors, has imbibed the very sap of our progenitors and has gained prominence as an infernal curse to civilization.

The vice of self-destruction is predominantly present in those unfortunates who are the are the recipients of various neuroses. Every physician can relate a story of a neurasthenic voluntarily terminating his life. Monographs on neuropathic diseases show that about twenty-five per cent of persons afflicted with nervous disorders will ultimately commit suicide. To the same category belong locomotor ataxia, general paresis of the insane, and a host of other minor nervous maladies. Records of asylums for the insane conclusively point to melancholia as a potent factor in the

history of modern self-destruction; not to speak of mania, circular insanity, epileptic insanity, and the insanities of puberty, pregnancy, and lactation.

The various intoxication neuroses, such as alcoholism, morphinism, and cocainism, often tend to the rise of an impulsive suicidal mania. The withdrawal of the drug does not in any way abate the predisposing tendency, as Dr. Crothers of Hartford, has ably shown.

Acute idiopathic delirium, and that due to the divers febrile infections, exanthematous diseases, is often a cause of unconscious self-destruction.

Temporary overexertion, both physical and mental, wherein our vital mechanism has been thrown into a state of unbalance, has frequently caused persons to commit suicide.

Aside from the various exciting agencies which may cause suicide, the all-dominant factor, predisposition, must be regarded as the true source and the prime factor. This is easily explained by the fact that some form of psychic aberration is always to be found in the family make-up of those individuals.

So, too, most cases of suicide supervening upon social and business failures can be traced to a neurotic family history. In short, no exciting cause would be strong enough to induce suicide, unless there be a hereditary predisposition to the same.

In the early history of jurisprudence hardly any cognizance was taken of the question of suicide. The first nation to enact some laws with reference to suicide were the Romans. They chastised every person who attempted to commit this wrong, by confiscating his property. Shortly England and France followed with the same punishment. Later on other communities, too, commenced to give it some legal thought. The English common law regaided suicide a felony. Presently it is considered a crime, and the attempt to commit it a misdemeanor.

In the United States the subject is largely governed by statutes, most of them practically following the English law. Thus, the assistance rendered to a person in the com

mission of suicide has been made a felony in Arkansas, Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, California, Oregon, Minnesota and other States. So, too, in the United States as in England an accessory before the fact is treated as principal. In Reg. vs. Jessap (10 Criminal Law Magazine, page 862) the court held that "if two persons agree that they will poison each other, each person is a principal and each is guilty." The same reasoning was applied in Blackburn vs. State, 23 Ohio St., 146, and in a number of recent New York cases.

The present tendency of the law on this subject is toward greater stringency. Many States, which till now have hardly given it any legal attention, are making rigid enactments. Inasmuch, however, as we have seen that most cases of suicide are due to some physical unsoundness, it is evident that what we most urgently need is not the addition of legal restrictions, but the improvement of our physical organism, for health is the key of human happiness. From the Medical Age.