The following is an extract of a letter found in the pocket of Captain Aitkins, of the Pembroke Fusileers, who committed suicide:—“As some inquiry may be instituted as to the cause of my death, I think it necessary to state that it was inflicted by my own hand, partly from pecuniary embarrassment, and partly from the effect of _strong nervous malady_, which has fixed itself on my spirits so as to render life insupportable.” In this case we have no hesitation in asserting, that if the brain could have been relieved of the unnatural weight which oppressed it, this poor man would not have stained his hand with his own blood. In many cases the delusion of the intellect is so self-evident that no one questions the existence of insanity. A respectable Scotch merchant, near Pimlico, committed suicide by cutting his throat. He fancied the devil was in him; he asserted he could feel him in his throat. On examining his room after his death, two wills were discovered, in one of which he desires his executors to employ a surgeon to open his body, that the devil might be found, secured, and destroyed; and in this way, he says, he will be prevented from injuring any one else. Many other cases could be cited in which the act of suicide was clearly traceable to mental derangement, were it considered necessary further to illustrate this point. Much evil has resulted from the opinions which the profession have entertained relative to the absence of insanity in cases of those who have exhibited a disposition to destroy themselves. In this matter, the principle which the great Edmund Burke applied to politics is equally applicable to medicine—“We had better be blamed for too anxious apprehension, than be ruined by too confident a security.” It is a safe doctrine always to presume the presence of insanity in those who have exhibited a desire to commit suicide. A person who has once attempted to take away his life cannot be trusted, notwithstanding he manifest the usual evidences of a sane intellect. It is astonishing to consider the ingenious tricks and stratagems to which a person whose mind is bent on self-destruction will have recourse in order to effect his purpose. We find recorded the case of a woman who was tried for her life, and who, in order that she might escape from the hands of the executioner, applied a hundred leeches to her body, hoping to bleed to death. Another female exposed herself to a swarm of bees; and we read of an apothecary who endeavoured to beat out his brains with his own pestle. A builder, who had been found fault with by his employer, became melancholy, and finally determined upon self-destruction. He hurried to a steep part of the high road, where vehicles of all descriptions were compelled to put on the drag in the descent. Here he waited until a heavily loaded wagon reached the spot, when he seized hold of one of the wheels that was not locked, and applying his body to the circumference, was instantly crushed.