Death Walk

A 62-year-old Scotsman, depressed, put a bullet through his brain with a .45 service revolver, leaving a 1 1/4-inch hole in his forehead. What happened thereafter was so astonishing that Edinburgh's Principal Police Surgeon Douglas J. A. Kerr reported it in last week's Lancet.

The suicide took place in the evening, in a summer house across the street from the suicide's rooming house. In the summer house police found about 20 cigaret stubs, the revolver, a bullet hole in the roof, and some particles of brain matter. "He must have remained unconscious for some hours. Snow began to fall at 6 next morning. . . . About 7 a.m., after it had stopped snowing, he had staggered from the summer house. . . . His footsteps could be traced in a rough circle round the gardens from tree to tree and back to the summer house, a distance of 165 yards. ... He then walked up a narrow path, unlocked the garden gate with his key, walked across the road ... a total distance of 300 yards. At 7:30 he rang the bell . . . and said quite clearly to [his landlady], 'I must go to the bathroom.' He was helped off with his overcoat and assisted to the bathroom. ... He died three hours later."

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