
358 
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

PHRENOLOGY FOR THE MILLION. 
No. L—PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 
BY J. F. GALL, M.D. 
(Continued from Page 293.) 

WE SPOKE, IN OUR LAST, OF THE IMPORTANT 
obligation laid upon us to prevent crimes. Let 
us pursue the subject, and now discourse of 
HOUSES OF CORRECTION AND PRISONS. 
There are some organisations so defective, and 
some combinations of circumstances so unfortu- 
nate, that it is absolutely impossible to prevent all 
crimes, even the most atrocious. We can only 
hope, whatever means we may employ, to diminish 
the number of malefactors. 
We have seen that the want of instruction, 
ignorance of moral and religious precepts, of the 
laws of duties toward men and toward God, are 
some of the principal sources of the criminal aber- 
rations of men. We must then supply from with- 
out, what is wanting to these individuals on the 
part of internal organisation and education. It is 
necessary, in the first place, that prisons should 
become houses of correction. ‘The treatment 
which has been used in prisons toward criminals, 
and which still continues the same in many places, 
would entirely defeat the end of all correction. 
Ordinary criminals, even when their crimes 
were different, were commonly collected in large 
numbers. We have, in fact, often seen indivi- 
duals merely arraigned for trial, mingled with 
prisoners already condemned. In certain places 
all were idle; ordinarily, they are occupied in 
labor, sometimes too easy, sometimes too difii- 
cult, often filthy and noxious, and almost always 
unprofitable. They avail themselves of every 
moment when they can escape notice, to recount 
to one another their adventures—each one finding 
great satisfaction in making known to others his 
own performances; and in this manner, as the 
prisoners themselves say, the prisons are like 
schools, in which all kinds of villanies are taught. 
The corruption of the new comer, especially when, 
from natural propensity, he finds pleasure in this 
species of instruction, is soon accomplished. He 
soon habituates himself to living in intimacy with 
the refuse of men. All shame, all horror of crime 
and of criminals, disappears; they become ac- 
quainted, make friends of each other, and concert 
joint plans for the future. Hardly are any set at 
liberty, when they seek to unite, to resume, with 
more audacity, their former mode of life. ‘There 
remains, in fact, to those who leave the prison, no 
other course to pursue. They are sent out without 
money, and without being assigned any deter- 
minate occupation. In some countries, they are 
not even under the immediate watch of the police; 
many, besides, are banished; and it follows that 
the neighboring states are infested with banditti. 
It seems to me, that this last species of punish- 
ment ought, at most, to be admissible only for 
political offences. Is the individual subjected to 
the punishment of branding? he is then publicly 
disgraced. What will become of him? Who 
will work with him? Who will employ him? 
Not only are all these punishments without any 
real object, but they oblige these wretches to de- 

vote themselves to crime, on pain of starving to 
death. Branding can serve no other purpose, 
than to betray those malefactors who fall again 
into crime, and who have escaped from the 
prisons to which they had been condemned for 
life. 
The prison is not always the kind of punish- 
ment which suits the character of the criminal 
and his peculiar propensities to evil. The society 
they enjoy renders their lives less miserable. If 
they are ill-fed, they are at least secured from all 
the wants common to this class of men; they are 
clothed and preserved from the injuries of the air. 
We have even seen some who procured their own 
arrest, in order to find a refuge in the prison. 
Men and women are often left together; whence it 
happens that, in the prisons themselves, their 
numbers are multiplied. Sometimes the prisoners 
are permitted to have their children with them. 
On the other hand, the punishments in prisons 
are often heavier than the law prescribes; espe- 
cially when the buildings are dirty, or placed in a 
damp soil, or constructed with stones, which at- 
tract and transmit the humidity of the atmosphere. 
Hence arises the so general alteration of the fluids 
and the solids; hence emanate tumors, glandu- 
lar and cutaneous affections, pneumonia, blind- 
ness, &c. Ifthe food is bad, and consists prin- 
cipally in dry pulse, this regimen is followed by 
dysenteries, which soon become mortal. When 
the punishment of a criminal is limited to a deten- 
tion for a stated time, it would be in accordance 
with the spirit of the sentence, to inflict the pun- 
ishment so as not to destroy the individual’s 
health.  [Ill-constructed and_ badly-organised 
prisons injure the social state in many respects, 
and the prisoners who are accustomed to inaction, 
or to such labors as spinning wool, or sawing 
dye-woods, which will not answer for them when 
placed at liberty, often remain a long time without 
resource. It is not surprising, then, that we find 
the prisons generally peopled with persons who 
return to them the second and even the tenth 
time. 
This faithful picture of places of confinement 
shows the urgent necessity of combining in them 
ali the institutions, proper to furnish to those who 
have been seduced, and those naturally wicked, 
all sorts of means to induce them to act con- 
formably to social order, and their own good. 
These principles were not new at the time of 
the first impression of my work ; and fortunately 
they are still less so at this moment. Men had 
long since insisted on the imstruction of the 
ignorant, on the reform of the erring, on the ame- 
lioration of criminals, and the extirpation of vices. 
But these rules have not been very generally exe- 
cuted, Itis at Philadelphia that they have been 
put in practice for the first time. The happy 
effects, which resulted hence, have encouraged 
other humane governments to imitate the example. 
Several States, besides prisons, have established 
houses of reformation and correction ; where 
instruction is the principal object, and where 
they habituate the inmates to constant toil and 
an honest trade. On the other hand, punishment 
is no longer the only object in prisons; there is 
also regard had to the moral correction. There 
are daily given to the prisoners, lessons in reading, 
writing, calculation, morals, and religion. It is 

