Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!].

  • Louis Proal
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    PASSION AND CRIMINALITY IN FRANCE. CHAPTER I. SUICIDE AS DETERMINED BY PASSION. Ariane ma sœur, de quel amour blessée Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée ? ^ Children are seldom known to die of grief, to kill themselves or go mad, on the death of their parents, — irreparable though the loss be. Similarly sorrow caused by the death of children or of husband or wife produces but a small crop of suicides and cases of madness. For instance in the year 1890 there were in all France only 6] suicides due to the loss of children, of husband or wife, and of parents. The total of suicides caused by disappointed love and by jealousy on the other hand reaches a very much higher figure,—amount- ing to about 500 annually. Again to this total of self-inflicted deaths must be added a not inconsiderable number of lingering deaths and instances of madness determined by love sorrows. As the result of an unreciprocated passion for a woman they have only known a short time, whom very likely they would soon have learned to hate, had they married her, whose loss in any case they could supply, we see unhappy lovers fall into a state of languor and de- pression, dangerous at once to health and reason. Their countenance expresses sadness and deep de- jection ; their gaze is indifferent to their surround- ' Ariane, my sister, wounded by what love didst thou die on those shores where thou wast forsaken ?