"No time for dissatisfaction": Thomas G. Masaryk on suicide

Long before Thomas G. Masaryk became father and first President of the new, independent nation of Czechoslovakia, he wrote a doctoral thesis on suicide. Suicide and the Meaning of Civilization covers a whole spectrum of possible causes for this act, which, as the 19th century drew its final gasping breaths, was talked of as an epidemic in many European countries. I've been cheating a little by reading an English translation from 1970 (meh, I've got coursework to write), but the German version is available to read online here.

Masaryk's treatment of the subject, published in Vienna in 1881, comes across as a strange pick-and-mix bag; admissions that the available statistics are insufficient to reach conclusions amongst bold, unsubstantiated assertions. This is not all that surprising when you consider that at this time sociology was only just beginning as a discipline. The following are some of the statements I found less believable but hey, I'm not expert on the subject:

Chapter 2, Section 1

5. Wind. The wind and suicide are already related in the popular belief that strong winds rise whenever someone hangs himself. In any case, certain winds are pernicious, as for instance, the sirocco; Cheyne claims the fall and west winds are responsible for suicides in England, and Osiander makes the same assertion for northern Germany. But how hot, drying winds, or cold and damp winds exert their unfavorable effects is evident to all. Think, for example, how the drying winds of America cause a degeneration in the glandular system, which causes the striking difference between the Yankee and his Uncle Bull* and also in part his irritability.

6. […] Women, it is said, choose Sunday with relative frequency, no doubt for religious reasons; Saturday, as housecleaning day, allows them no time for dissatisfaction with life; Monday is also supposed to be very unpleasant for women.

7. With respect to time of day, most suicides are generally committed during the day, the fewest at night. Night has something soothing, life-giving, and restorative about it; also, most men are born at night, when the fewest deaths occur. The bright day excites and stimulates. While the darkness of night leads to understanding, peace of mind, and sleep.

pp.15-16

(translation: William B. Weist and Robert G. Batson)

*John Bull, i.e. the English?

On leprosy, salmon, and Irish gluttony

Some medical information for you, heavily laced with no-holds-barred racial prejudice. This is from Irelands Naturall History by Gerard Boate (1657:

Ch. 24. Sect. 4. Of the Leprosie

The Rickets are of late very rife in Ireland, where few yeares agoe unknown; so on the contrary it hath been almost quite freed from another disease, one of the very worst and miserablest in the world, namely the Leprosie, which in former times used to bee very common there, especially in the Province of Munster; the which therefore was filled with Hospitals, expresly built for to receive & keep the Leprous persons. But many yeares since Ireland hath been almost quite freed from this horrible and loathsome disease, and as few Leprous persons are now found there, as in any other Countrie in the world; so that the Hospitals erected for their use, having stood empty a long time, at length are quite decayed & come to nothing. The cause of this change is not so obscure nor unknown, as it is in most other changes of that nature. For that this sickness was so generall in Ireland, did not come by any peculiar defect in the Land or in the Air, but meerly through the fault and foul gluttony of the inhabitants, in the excessive devouring of unwholesome Salmons. The common report in Ireland is, that boiled Salmons eaten hot out of the Kettle in great quantity, bring this disease, and used to be the cause why it was so common: and some famous Authors have not stuck to relate as much for a truth. But that is a fable, and Salmons have not that evill quality, which way soever they be eaten and prepared, but when they are out of season, which is in the latter end of the year, after they have cast their spawn: upon which they doe not onely grow very weak and flaggie, but so unwholesome, that over their whole body they break out in very filthy spots, just like a scalled mans head, so as it would loath any man so see them; nevertheless the Irish, a nation extremely barbarous in all parts of their life, did use to take them in that very season, as well as at any other time of the year, and to eat them in very great abundance, as easily they might, every river and rivelet in most parts being very full of them, and by that meanes that horrible disease came to be so common amongst them. But the English having once gotten the command of the whole Countrie into their hands, made very severe laws against the taking of Salmons in that unwholesome season, and saw them carefully observed; whereby hindering those barbarians against their will to feed on that poisonous meat, they were the cause that the woefull sickness, which used so mightily to reign amongst them, hath in time been almost quite abolished: which great benefit, with so many others, that hatefull people hath rewarded with seeking utterly to exterminate their benefactors.

(pp.184-5)