THE JUKES. 95 



as a medical question before it is approaclied as a moral one ; or 

 rather, the moral treatment must be accomplished through the 

 channel of physical cure as an antecedent and essential requisite. 



Intermittent Industry. — Dr. Bruce Thomson, surgeon to the 

 General Prison of Scotland, of eighteen years' experience, thus 

 speaks of disease among criminals : " In all my experience I have 

 never seen such an accumulation of morbid appearances as I witness 

 in the post mortem examinations of the prisoners v/ho die here. 

 Scarcely one of them can be said to die of one disease, for almost 

 every organ of the body is more or less diseased ; and the wonder 

 to me is that life could have been supported in such a diseased 

 frame. Their moral nature seems equally diseased with their 

 physical frame ; and whilst their mode of life in prison reanimates 

 their physical health, I doubt whether their minds are equally 

 benefited, if improved at all. On a close acquaintance with crimi- 

 nals, of 1 8 years' standing, I consider that nine in ten are of inferior 

 intellect, but that all are excessively cunning." * 



These remarks, although substantially true of our own criminals, 

 would present an overdrawn picture, and, after all, when we come 

 to analyze cunning, it is a modified form of intellectual aptitude, the 

 result of a very careful education of the faculties to escape detec- 

 tion, which training, had it been directed to other modes of gaining 

 a living, would probably have produced the intelligence which Dr. 

 Tiiomson here contrasts with cunning. Nor can the results oi post 

 mortem examinations be held to express the general physical condition 

 of convicts, for those who die must necessarily be those in whom dis- 

 ease has worked its utmost ravages. But the substantial truth ex- 

 pressed in the foregoing statement makes the question one of the 

 important branches of investigation, and one on which much of our 

 treatment of the criminal class must depend if we propose to deal 

 with the crime problem intelligently. Let us look to the effect of 

 sickness upon the reputable classes. See how a bad cold, which 

 " stops up the head," and brings with it ear-ache, stiff neck and sore 

 throat, causes the most industrious man to lay up for a few days be- 



• The Hereditary Nature of Crime, in Journal of Mental Science, vol. xv. p. 487. 



