752 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as a Society Function, which has aroused the fury of the clerical and 

 moderate factions in Italy. Chips from the workshop of his extraor- 

 dinarily prolific brain, ever evolving new ideas, new points of view, 

 he scatters in the many articles he loves to write for English and 

 American periodicals; but his most important scientific communica- 

 tions he reserves for the Archivio di Psichiatria, which he edits to- 

 gether with Ferri and Garofolo. His work is by no means perfect: 

 he is apt to jump too rapidly at conclusions, to accept data too 

 lightly; thus he was led at the beginning to overestimate the atavis- 

 tic element in the criminal, and at a later date he has pressed too 

 strongly the epileptic affinities of crime. Still, when all is said and 

 done, his work is undoubtedly epoch-making, and has opened up 

 valuable new lines of investigation and suggested others. 



We said that Lombroso's first studies were directed to the pel- 

 lagra, that strange and terrible disease which annually mows down 

 such a vast number of victims in the fair land of northern Italy, and 



which is a luminous proof 

 of the grave financial condi- 

 tion of the laborers in some 

 of the most beautiful and 

 richest regions of the world. 

 Concerning this terrible ill- 

 ness, which densely popu- 

 lates Italian madhouses, all 

 students of natural science 

 have long been gravely occu- 

 pied. For the terrible in- 

 crease in lunacy noted by 

 Italian statistics in the last 

 five years the pellagra is 

 largely responsible. Psychi- 

 atry, which has abandoned 

 the old methods in Italy, is 

 no longer a jailer employing 

 the methods of an inquisitor, 

 but a science that seeks for 

 ultimate causes and reme- 

 dies, and, conjoined to eco- 

 nomic and political science, endeavors to restore to society a large 

 contingent of forces which would otherwise be destroyed by 

 disease. Especially active in this department is Enrico Mor- 

 selli, at present director of the hospital attached to the Genoa 

 University. Morselli is in the flower of his life, and much may be 

 still hoped from him. Like Lombroso, he is small of stature and 



Enrico Morselli. 



