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The Body-Length-Leg Ratio in the General Population and in Mental Hospital Patients and its Possible Significance in Suicide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

H. Pullar Strecker
H. Pullar Strecker*
Affiliation:
Birmingham Joint Board of Research for Mental Disease
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Extract

Psychiatrists will welcome Piney's recent preliminary communication (1) on the possible significance of certain physical characters. A series of measurements of about 500 bodies revealed that a very high number of suicides among the general population occurred in persons showing a body-length-leg ratio of over 50, i. e., the leg-length being more than 50% of the total body-length. Piney believes that persons of this type, among other abnormalities, have such mental characters as may lead to suicide. He raises the question whether body-length-leg ratios of over 50 are commoner among the inmates of mental hospitals than in the general population.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 82 , Issue 336 , January 1936 , pp. 38 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1936 

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References

1 Piney, A., Lancet, 1935, ii, p. 972.Google Scholar
2 Abrahams, A., ibid., 1935, ii, p. 1031.Google Scholar
3 Hoffmann, C. E. E., after Vierordt, , Anatomische, Physiologische und Physikalische Tabellen, Jena, 1906.Google Scholar
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11 Jacobi, W., and Kolle, K., Arch. Psychiat., 1926, lxxvii, p. 381.Google Scholar
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