Dr. Gray, in the American Journal of Insanity, vol. xxxiv., writes, in regard to the United States: “Suicide is always an unnatural act, but in the large proportion of cases, if not in the majority, it is committed by sane people.” Bucknill and Tuke, “Psychological Medicine,” state definitely, “it cannot be disputed that suicide may be done in a perfectly healthy state of mind,” ... “neither can it be doubted that it is the effect of a cerebro-mental disease in many cases.” M. F. Dabadie, the author of a famous French work on Suicide, remarks, “if physiologists had endeavoured simply to establish that suicide was frequently a sign of madness, no one would have denied them; but to pretend, as some French physiologists have done, that every suicide is insane, is to _insult history and common sense_, and to expose oneself to ridicule.” Des Etangs, in his work, “Suicide in France, from 1789 to 1860,” analyses and reviews the causation of 210,000 cases; he is fully convinced of the very large number of persons who kill themselves from sane motives, and with a sane mind. He narrates numerous instances in which suicides have left their reasons for the act, written out at length, and these reasons, in most cases, shew “une lucidité parfaite.” M. Littré remarks, “Quand un homme expose clairement les raisons qui l’empêchent de vivre plus longtemps, et quand ces raisons sont réeles et non pas imaginaires, quel motif y-a-t-il de lui denier la liberté morale, telle que nous la connaissons chez chacun de nous?” In this place may suitably be mentioned the sad death of the Afghan surgeon Mahomed Ismail Khan, who had studied medicine in England, had taken his diplomas, and had then found all avenues to making a living in England closed to him on account of his nationality, colour, &c. (he could not return to his Indian home, having lost caste there); he, poor fellow, after making repeated efforts to obtain a situation that would support him, and after having exhausted his private means, drank prussic acid in bed at his lodgings. He left behind him a long and detailed history of himself, ending in a dissertation on suicide and its permissibility. This essay, from its great medical and psychological interest, was offered to the editor of one of our leading medical journals for publication, but this was declined, on the ground that the arguments in favour of suicide were so delusive that it would be a public error to disseminate them. History repeats itself, for I find Voltaire narrates that he knew a professional man who, before killing himself, wrote an essay on suicide, and sent it for publication to the authorities of his native town, in 1769; the town council refused to publish it, assigning as their reason, that it would encourage men to quit a life, of which so much ill could be said.