The physician should constantly bear in mind this important fact connected with the suicidal disposition—viz., that those determined upon self-destruction often resolve to kill themselves in a particular manner, and however anxious they may be to quit life, they have been known to wait for months and years, until they have had an opportunity of effecting their purpose according to their own preconceived notions. A man who has attempted to drown himself will not readily be induced to cut his throat, and _vice versa_. A morbid idea is frequently associated in the maniac’s mind with a particular kind of death, and if he be removed from all objects likely to awaken this notion, the inclination to suicide may be removed. An old man, upwards of seventy years of age, who had a market garden, near the asylum at Wakefield, consulted the late Sir W. Ellis as to the best mode of destroying himself, as he had made up his mind not to live any longer. He said he had thought of hanging himself, if Sir William could not recommend an easier death. The physician talked to him some time upon the heinousness of the crime he contemplated, and endeavoured to shew him that hanging was a most horrible death, from the suffocation that must be felt. His conversation was attended with little success. Finding that the chylopoietic viscera were a good deal disordered, he prescribed for him, and sent to inform his wife that he ought never to be left alone. The medicine had the effect of restoring the secretions to a healthy action, and he got better. Sir William heard no more of him for some time, when he was at length informed that he was discovered dead in a little shed in his garden, where he used to keep his tools. But so fixed was the mode in his mind, by which he was determined to accomplish his death, that, though the place was so low he could not stand upright in it, and he had not a rope or a string with which he could suspend himself, he contrived to effect his purpose by getting a willow twig, and making it into a noose, which he fastened to one of the rafters. He stooped to put his head through it, and then pushing his feet from under him, suspended himself until he died. Now, if he had not made up his mind to destroy himself in this particular way, he might have accomplished it with much greater ease by drowning himself in the pond in his garden, or by cutting his throat with his garden knife, which he always had about him; but neither of these was the mode he previously intended. It may be practically useful to all who have the immediate care of suicidal patients to bear this in mind; and if the medical man can find out that any particular plan is contemplated, he ought to be especially careful to remove the means of accomplishing it out of the patient’s reach, and to prevent him having an opportunity of carrying it into execution.[60]