Suicide; an Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics

Abstract

THIS work enters the International Science Series as an abridged translation of the author's original book, which was written in Italian. As its title implies, it is throughout statistical, and as no pains have been spared in collecting statistics from every available quarter, the results are the most comprehensive and complete that can be obtained with reference to the subject of which the essay treats. These results are interesting, not only because of the light which they shed upon a somewhat sombre topic, but also because they show what a powerful and trustworthy instrument of inquiry we possess in the statistical method, even when applied to what at first sight might appear the most complex and variable of causes leading to the most uncertain or least calculable of effects. For assuredly the most striking feature common to all the multitudinous tables which Dr. Morselli presents to us is the uniformity with which, under a given set of conditions and over a sufficiently wide area of observation, a certain average number of suicides will occur.

Suicide; an Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics.

By Henry Morselli, Professor of Psychological Medicine in Royal University, Turin, &c. International Science Series, Vol. xxxvi. (London: C. Kegan Paul and Co., 1881.)