As a preventive of suicide in melancholia, the noted Avenbrugger recommended that the patient should be made to drink a pint of cold water every hour, whilst his feet were wrapped in flannel. Hufeland also advised the ingestion of plenty of cold water for mania. The eminent alienist Burrows recommended emetics, bleeding, and warm baths, accompanied by cold douche to the head, as measures fitted to remove the suicidal propensity. The means recommended by Brierre de Boismont for avoiding the suicidal propensity in the insane were the persistent use of morphia to ensure sleep, and the prolonged use of baths, the continuous immersion of the body for four, five, or six hours. Griesinger remarks that medication is of no use, and that mechanical restraint does not remove the tendency, even if it renders the act impossible for the time; nothing but constant watching is of any avail until the inclination passes off. It has been suggested by many physicians that bleeding would remove the suicidal tendency in cases where it is associated with cerebral irritation, congestion, or inflammation. Several cases of cut-throat are on record, in which the patient, who had just been raving, became sane after the bleeding which followed his act: Dr. Southwood Smith mentions this, see “Philosophy of Health,” vol. i., p. 109; and the elder Disraeli mentions that a surgeon narrated such a case to him. See “Curiosities of Literature.” The case of the late Sir Samuel Romilly was one example of this point; the bleeding restored his senses, and he did all in his power to check the hæmorrhage. See Wynter. “Borderlands of Insanity.” Suicidal patients require most watching early in the morning; a good lunch often dispels the tendency for the day. During convalescence from mania, &c., relapses into suicidal condition are very common, and it is frequently in these remissions that nurses become less watchful just when they should be vigilant, and the act is committed. When the tendency is the result of alcoholism, we are met by this difficulty; restraint is needed, and yet no one has the power to enforce restraint; the physician succeeds well enough in relieving the alcoholic delirium and coincident risk of suicide, perhaps time after time; but is powerless to prevent a succeeding attack. Unless a sufferer can be induced to volunteer his entry into a retreat, there are no means of saving him from himself. So long as a man is sensible when sober, be it only for an hour a day, he is beyond the reach of compulsory cure. In the suicidal mania of parturition, on the other hand, the patient is happy in being already, from her state, under the practical control of her medical attendant, and hence such cases are almost always restrained successfully.