Many teachers use jokes and anecdotes to enliven lectures and underscore main points. Here's an example that involves a rather ironic urban legend. At least I think it's an urban legend: I'm still seeking more proof.
Sir Sidney Smith, a British expert on forensic medicine, gives this account of teaching via storytelling in his book "Mostly Murder" (London, 1959):"When I lectured to my students on multiple methods of suicide, I generally finished up by relating the most outstanding case of all, a classic of its kind, which, unfortunately, is not susceptible to confirmation.
"The story is that a highly pessimistic individual had determined to take his life, and wanted to make sure there would be none of the slip-ups he had read about. He decided that hanging would be an efficient method of self-destruction and selected a tree with a stout branch overhanging a cliff, the sea being 50 feet below.
"In order to prevent any pain in the hanging process he procured himself a large dose of opium. Although these arrangements seemed fairly complete, he decided that in order to make certain of a successful result it would be a good idea to shoot himself as well.
"The noose adjusted, the poison taken and the revolver cocked, he stepped over the cliff, and as he did so, fired.
"The jerk of the rope altered his aim, and the bullet missed his head but cut partly through the rope. This broke with the jerk of the body, and he fell 50 feet into the sea below. There he swallowed a quanittiy of salt water, vomited the poison, and swam ashore a better and a wiser man."
The only other published version of "The Failed Suicide" that I was able to find came from a reader who copied it from a 1944 London Daily Express column called "50 Years Ago." It sounds like a concise summary of Sir Sidney Smith's anecdote:
"A British suicide took poison and tried to hang himself from a cliff above the sea, shooting himself in the head as, noose around his neck, he jumped out of this world. But he missed and shot through the rope, falling into the sea below; the brine he swallowed neutralized the poisin, and the sea washed him ashore."
Smith cites no parallels for "The Failed Suicide," but since he called it "a classic of its kind," I suspect that other accounts of the story exist. And I hope to find them.
I've also been racking my brain to remember where I read (or heard) a similar story that supposedly happened, not in England, but on either the San Francisco Bay Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge.
Maybe I'm hallucinating about this after having read too many wacky stories, but I swear that I heard an American version of the failed-suicide story.
I've also heard two variations of a different failed-suicide story.
One is about a man who had an argument with his wife. The wife stormed out of the apartment, and the husband decided to hurl himself form the window onto the street below.
By the time the man had scrawled a suicide note and opened the window, his wife was just leaving the building at the main entrance directly below their window.
The man jumped and landed on his wife. She was killed by the force of the collision; but he survived.
In the second version, the man had been fired from his job. He leaped from the office window and landed on his boss, who, after the unpleasant duty of firing an employee, was on his way to an early lunch.
Life's not really that neat and ironic, ,so I'm assuming there's a strong dose of urban legend to all these stories.