400 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



who have undertaken very careful and prolonged special 

 examinations of offenders for us, in their reports account for 

 very Httle indeed of the antisocial behavior, and in spite 

 of the existence of the much-advertised and much used 

 extracts of glands, offer very few suggestions for treatment. 

 I have come to the conclusion that the environmental hfe 

 and experiences, which all biologists must include when 

 they are studying an organism, are too often left out of 

 account in the enthusiasm for endocrinology. Perhaps this 

 is because many of these environmental experiences are 

 only to be known at all through analysis of the mental 

 life and content. 



Some of us who are a bit older have seen rise and fall 

 many biological, particularly medical, theories concerning 

 the causation of criminahty. We may remember that it 

 has been successively regarded as a manifestation of epilepsy, 

 of degeneracy, of feeblemindedness, of abnormal intracranial 

 pressure which was to be relieved through opening the skull. 

 Then trauma of the hypothetical moral center was held 

 responsible, and so were tonsils and adenoids, and more 

 recently, focal infections, while to be really up-to-date, we 

 must include abnormal functioning of the glands of internal 

 secretion. 



HEREDITY AND CRIMINALITY 



Readers in biology should very properly have the matter 

 of heredity presented to them, even here in our section on 

 hum.an conduct. Behavior disorders, though having such 

 a muItipHcity of possible causation factors, are regarded 

 often by the laity and sometimes by scientific men, perhaps 

 because they are not brought face to face with all the facts in 

 individual case studies, as proof of an outbreak of inherited 

 tendencies. In contrast to this it is interesting to note that 

 everywhere in actual cHnical work with delinquents and 

 criminals, very httle explanation is offered in terms of 

 heredity. Discussions on this topic have been undertaken 

 mainly without careful scientific work being offered in 

 proof that there is any such thing as the inheritance of 

 criminal tendencies. Again, neglect of the deeper influences of 



