This theory of psychic
periodicity has been seriously put forward, but has been
investigated and dismissed, so far as crime in Holland is
concerned, by J.R.B. de Roos, in the Transactions of the sixth
Congress of Criminal Anthropology, at Turin, in 1906 (_Archivio
di Psichiatria_ fasc. 3, 1906).
The general statistics of suicides in Continental Europe show a very
regular and unbroken curve, attaining a maximum in June and a minimum in
December, the curve rising steadily through the first six months, sinking
steadily through the last six months, but always reaching a somewhat
greater height in May than in July.[164] Morselli shows that in various
European countries there is always a rise in spring and in autumn (October
or November).[165] Morselli attributes these spring and autumn rises to
the influence of the strain of the early heat and the early cold.[166] In
England, also, if we take a very large number of statistics, for instance,
the figures for London during the twenty years between 1865 and 1884, as
given by Ogle (in a paper read before the Statistical Society in 1886), we
find that, although the general curve has the same maximum and minimum
points, it is interrupted by a break on each side of the maximum, and
these two breaks occur precisely at about March and October.[167] This is
shown in the curve in Chart 6, which presents the daily average for the
different months.
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