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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/619

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SUICIDE AND THE WEATHER.
611

in the groups from twenty to forty-five degrees, conditions which are not generally considered most agreeable and within which are found the monthly means for the colder months of the year.

These results, however, are corroborative of the findings for the study of monthly occurrence which show deficiencies for those months. The excesses for extreme conditions of heat and cold are perhaps only what might be expected. In the thickly populated tenements of the city great heat becomes so oppressive as hardly to be endured, and at the other extreme of temperature, when the mercury of the thermometer

Fig. 4.

is only in the bulb, both personal misery and a feeling of sympathy for a dependent family might prompt one to self-destruction as the last resource.

This curve does not differ materially from that of the Assault and Battery,[1] except that in the latter it is shown that for the highest temperature ever experienced those misdemeanors, as recorded by the police, show deficiencies. For them the numbers increase regularly up


  1. See 'Conduct and the Weather,' Monograph Supplement No. 10, 'The Psychological Review.'