CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 635 



inquests were now sufficiently advanced to demand their practical ap- 

 plication. 



The scientist who desires seriously to study the psychology of a crim- 

 inal is fairly well received by the prison authorities in all civilized coun- 

 tries, and a good opportunity is given him for study, whether it shall 

 be during the life of the criminals or upon their bodies after death. 



In these conditions it is our duty, as we find ourselves representing 

 one of the principal sciences in the world, to report, each one, to this 

 Congress of Criminal Anthropology, what he has done, what he can do 

 in his own country, and thus to gather and unite the largest possible 

 number of discovered and verified facts. This congress, representing 

 all countries, may thus agree upon certain facts as the result of a once 

 separate but now united series, and a law be thus established. That law 

 it is our duty to formulate and proclaim. 



In 1884, in Italy, when the general direction of prisons was con- 

 fided to M. Beltrani-Scalia, one of our most illustrious savants, the 

 Government ordained the autopsy of all criminals who die in the prison 

 of the kingdom. It was thus intended to gather from the cadavers of 

 criminals, a series of anatomic and physiologic facts, by which their 

 history relative to crime, aided by the documents of the prison, could 

 be made known. 



Dr. Sciammana said he had been charged to formulate a series of 

 questions, to which all the doctors of the prisons of the kingdoms would 

 respond, relative to the exterior examination of the cadavers, but not 

 including anthropometric researches. To respond conscientiously to 

 the questions by doctors who were entirely unused to them and whose 

 time was already engaged, required much labor and the consumption 

 of much time, and it was concluded by them that the work was too 

 heavy. Therefore, the scheme has not succeeded as well as was ex- 

 pected, and we have to renounce hope for the present of obtaining this 

 scientific material for studies in criminology. To obviate the difiiculty, a 

 new formula of questions has been prepared, which while it has reduced 

 somewhat our scientific information, has also so far reduced the labor of 

 answering them, as that the result is even more satisfactory than before. 



But there is something to which, in relation to the statistics of 

 crime, the attention of the congress is particularly called. It is not 

 difficult to report all the information concerning the crimes found in 

 the records made by the magistrates or courts who tried the prisoners 

 and the attorney-general who prosecuted them. Also such notes as 

 have been made while the criminals were in prison. But these things 

 are of small utility if there is not also gathered the more precious ma- 

 terial concerning the personality of the criminal, the material psycho- 

 logic, anthropologic, teratologic and anatomo-pathologic, which should 

 be studied by competent medical authorities. To accomplish this it is 

 necessary to follow a single method of study and investigation by which 

 the facts gathered can be compared as though they were done by the 



