284 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



the physical, moral, and intellectual development of 

 this abnormal human type. In this study the Italians, 

 with Professor Cesare Lombroso at their head, lead 

 the van, as the representatives of the most criminal of 

 all civilised countries properly should. Already the 

 work has been taken up with vigour in almost every 

 continental European state, and in America. Time 

 was when in Bruce Thomson, Maudsley, Wilson, and 

 Nicolson, England could boast of some workers in 

 this field, but unfortunately at present little is being 

 done at home to advance our knowledge of that 

 troublesome, expensive, and interesting item of society, 

 the criminal. It is to be hoped, however, that the 

 recently published excellent work of Mr. Havelock 

 Ellis,* which has attracted so much attention, will, by 

 making known what is being done in this branch of 

 natural science in other countries, awaken Englishmen 

 to a sense of the great importance of the subject, and 

 stimulate prison officials, psychologists, and others to 

 careful research among the inmates of our prisons. 



We know that when degeneration attacks the 

 system its ravages are never confined to any one tissue 

 or organ, and to this rule the instinctive criminal is 

 no exception. His moral sense t is in process of 



* " The Criminal." 1891. 



t " Moral feeling ... is a function of organisation, and is as 

 essentially dependent upon the integrity of that part of the nervous 

 system which ministers to its manifestations as any other display 

 of mental function. . . . When it is not exercised it decays, and 

 so leads to individual degeneration, and, through individuals, to 

 degeneracy of race." Maudsley in " Kesponsibility in Mental 

 Disease," p. 60. 



