REFORMATORY PRISONS. 607 



and in Massachusetts. In Italy most of these unhappy creatures 

 are held to be lazy, riotous, perverse, or deceitful, and when their 

 lunacy is admitted it is difficult to obtain their admission into 

 asylums, and this because this special class of lunatics are dan- 

 gerous inmates for ordinary madhouses. They steadfastly resist 

 all discipline, they permit themselves obscene and violent acts ; 

 they are discontented with everybody and they evince themselves 

 indifferent to punishment ; in a word, they carry into the mad- 

 house the habits and vices of the immoral class from which they 

 spring, and thus become apostles of sodomy, rebellion, robbery, 

 and desertion, to the detriment of the establishment and of the 

 other lunatics. Often, too often Prof. Lombroso says, such men 

 are allowed to wander free in the midst of society, and are the 

 more dangerous because under an apparent calmness and lucid 

 intelligence they retain their diseased impulses, giving proof of 

 this when least expected. The professor cites several examples, 

 and holds that to men thus mentally afflicted are due the epidem- 

 ical madnesses that show themselves in the form of Nihilism, 

 Mormonism, Anabaptists, the incendiaries in Normandy of 1830, 

 and the Parisian Commune. 



He insists rigidly on the point that this institution of criminal 

 lunatic asylums is not due to sentimental pity, but is a pure meas- 

 ure rather of social precaution than of humanity. And against 

 the objection that might be raised that real madmen may be con- 

 founded with dissimulators, Lombroso sets the development of 

 modern anthropologic studies, which rarely, when the diagnosis 

 is carefully made, falls into error on this point. By the institu- 

 tion of criminal lunatic asylums we obviate the transmission of 

 the disease to offspring, we hinder recidivism and its consequences, 

 which at best lead to the heavy cost of a new trial for the crimi- 

 nal. And that the theory is proved by practice to be correct is 

 evinced by the fact that gradually the objections of adversaries 

 are being overcome, so that criminal madhouses, under different 

 forms, are being established in Denmark, Sweden, and France, 

 where, since 1876, there exists one at Gaillon annexed to the cen- 

 tral prison. The other civilized peoples of Europe, if they have 

 not real criminal madhouses, have certain laws and institutions 

 that in part answer the same purpose, as in Belgium, at Berlin, 

 Hamburg, Halle, and Bruchsal. In Italy not only are there no 

 such special establishments, but there is not even a line in the 

 codex admitting the possible necessity for any such institution. 

 Prof. Lombroso invokes these salutary provisions in ardent terms. 

 He writes : " The orbit of crime is too deeply engraved in the book 

 of our destiny for us to delude ourselves that we can suppress its 

 course. But if other undisputed laws do not fail us, like those 

 concerning the selection of species, we may hope by such prevent- 



