McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908Various
History
McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
The hundreds of Russian women who between 1877 and 1885 were exiled to
eastern Siberia for political offenses had no shelter or protection
whatever, and must necessarily have suffered more than the exiled men
from the hardships and privations of banishment; and yet, I am quite
sure that I understate the fact when I say that the number of suicides
among the men was at least five times greater than it was among the
women. The exiled men themselves admitted to me that when it came to the
endurance of suffering against which no fight could be made and from
which there was no escape, the women were greatly their superiors. The
infrequency of self-destruction among women, as compared with that among
men, seems to me to be due, not to their comparative immunity from
suffering, but to three other causes, namely, first, a greater power of
patient, passive endurance, when there is no fight to be made; second, a
mind and heart that are more influenced by feelings and beliefs that may
be called religious; and, third, a peculiar capacity for self-restraint
and self-preservation, based on the maternal instinct, that is, on
closer and more intimate relations with, stronger love for, and greater
devotion to young children.
A study of the relation that suicide bears to occupation discloses some
interesting and noteworthy facts. The first is that soldiers, both in
Europe and in the United States, must be put in a class by themselves,
for the reason that the suicide rate of army officers and men is so much
higher than that of the populations to which they belong that they can
hardly be included in the same category. In Prussia, for example, the
proportion of military suicides to civilian suicides is 1-1/2 to 1; in
England 2-1/2 to 1; in Italy 5 to 1; in Austria 10 to 1; and in Russia
nearly 11 to 1. Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to
kill themselves is 8-1/2 times that of adult men in civil life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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