d sexual appetite.

The victim of homicidal impulse is, to all outward appearances,
perfectly sane otherwise. His impulse frequently leaves him for years
and then returns with overpowering force.

Epileptics who have just passed through violent convulsions, will
frequently attack bystanders with great fury. Some alienists declare
that homicidal mania is frequently only a masked epilepsy. All
epileptics should be carefully watched; they may become dangerous to
society at any moment. Numerous instances are recorded of murder
committed by sufferers from _petit mal_, a form of epilepsy. I once saw
a negro walk up to a white man, who was a stranger and unknown by him,
and fell him to the earth by striking him with a club. The negro was
arrested, and the next day swore that he was entirely unconscious of
having struck anyone. It was proven at his trial that he was subject to
mild epileptic attacks.

I believe that all suicides are due to mental aberration. It may be the
result of a momentary and sudden loss of mental equipoise, or the final
and fatal ending of a premeditated desire carried through days, weeks,
months, and even years.

We see a man, blessed with everything that makes life enjoyable, genial,
gay, with a ready smile and kindly word for everyone, suddenly, in a
moment, pass forever out into the unknown--self-killed, a victim of his
own creation. We stand amazed! Why did he do it? We can find nothing in
his past or present condition to warrant such an action.

He was the victim of momentary aberration, or, perhaps, deep in his
mind, buried and hidden even from himself, there dwelt a desire for
self-slaughter, when a "physical pain, an unexpected impression, a
moral affection, an indiscreet proposition" uncovered this desire, and
he at once committed the deed!

There are epidemics of suicide. Let the papers chronicle some peculiar
method of suicide selected by some unfortunate, and others will
immediately follow his example. Unconscious cerebration also hurls many
souls out of the world. I was called to see a gentleman who had
attempted suicide by slashing the radial artery at the wrist. I found
him holding a compress on the severed vessel and greatly alarmed. He
swore to me that he was totally unconscious how he had come to do the
deed, and that he did not know that he had cut himself until he felt the
pain and saw the blood flowing from the wound!

Viraginity and effemination, while not mental insanities,