[Contribution of pathologic anatomy and forensic medicine to a theory of suicide in Germany from 1870 to 1933].

Alarming suicide records encouraged the community of science-oriented medicine in the last third of the 19th century to pay more attention to the suicide phenomenon and, in the context of pathological anatomy, to try to identify causes as well as possible approaches to prophylaxis and therapy. Hopes were not satisfied for specific morphological findings from suicide cases, as may be seen from various research results reported in this paper. Nevertheless, this approach had to it social potentials helpful in reducing bias and sanctions against suicides. However, attempts failed to enlarge scientific and social effectiveness by closer coordination of scientific research with efforts to control suicide at psychic and social levels and in public life. Science-oriented medicine actually retreated to biological factors, even before the first world war, and thus left the people concerned exposed to social degradation and marginalisation, as suicide continued to be considered an inescapable fate.