tand in the
following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter
last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in
ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides is
the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian
suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and
185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides
in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring
and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.

A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same
result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a
paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that
city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics
which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe,
suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in
December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336
and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the
figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the
correspondence is almost startling.

Notwithstanding the immense difference between the population of Russia
and that of the United States, in environment, in education, in
religion, in inherited character, in temperament, and in civilization
generally, the mysterious law that controls the seasonal distribution of
suicides operates in America exactly as it operates in the great empire
of the Slavs. In Russia, out of every thousand suicides, the number who
kill themselves in the fall-and-winter half of the year is precisely
400; in America it is 386. In Russia, the proportion per thousand in the
spring-and-summer half of the year is 600; in America it is 614. There
is a slightly greater tendency to spring-and-summer suicide in the
United States than in Russia, but the variation is only a little more
than one per cent., and taking into consideration the great difference
between the oppressed and ignorant peasants of Russia, and the free,
well-educated citizens of our own country, the practical identity of
their seasonal suicide rates seems to me a most extraordinary social and
psychological fact.

This, however, is by no means a complete statement of the problem
involved in the seasonal distribution of suicides. Spring and summer are
the suici