414 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VI., No. 144, 



voted to religion, tattooing themselves with reli- 

 gious symbols, asking for God's aid in their enter- 

 X^rises, and thoroughly sincere in their belief that 

 confession absolves them from all responsibility. 

 They are very superstitious ; several were found 

 who believed that they expiated their crime by 

 dipping their fingers in the blood of the victim 

 and sucking them, or by wearing the same shirt 

 for a year. 



A very excellent example of the connection 

 between the various forms of mental and moral 

 imbecility is shown in the case of a certain Salva- 

 tore Misdea, a soldier, whose crime was one of a 

 peculiarly savage nature. He had a prejudice 

 against all Italians who did not come from his 

 own province of Calabria, and imagined that a 

 certain officer had selected his fellow-countryman 

 for punishment just because the latter was a 

 Calabrian. He attacks the corporal, but another 

 soldier, Cordara, interferes. He threatens to chop 

 Cordara's head off that night, but soon everything 

 is calm again. Suddenly a shot is heard and a 

 soldier falls. Misdea enters with a gun, and fires 

 into the crowd right and left. Many try to escape, 

 but he pursues them, and kills the corporal and 

 five or six other soldiers before the gun is wTested 

 from his hands. In prison he was carefully ex- 

 amined by M. Lombroso and Bianchi. They 

 find him to be a crafty, suspicious feUow, with a 

 good deal of pride in his criminal powers. His 

 head was deformed and asymmetrical; the forehead 

 low and poorly shaped, narrow in the temporal 

 region and large above. The right half of the 

 head is more developed than the left ; the reverse 

 being the normal condition. Besides, he has 

 epileptic tendencies. His family presents a line 

 of abnormal persons, whose abnormahty shows 

 itself in insanity, idiocy, criminality, and general 

 looseness of character. (1.) His grandfather was 

 weak-minded. (2.) Of four uncles, two were im- 

 beciles, a third eccentric, and a fourth killed a 

 friend in a broil ; while Misdea's father wasted a 

 fortune on drink, women, and gambling, and his 

 mother was an hysterical woman, who had one 

 brother a brigand and another a sneak-thief. (3.) 

 Of four cousins, two were imbeciles, a third idiotic, 

 and the other insane. (4.) Of four brothers, one 

 was healthy ; two were drunkards, one at the 

 same time epileptic ; and the other was a violent 

 character. (5.) A nephew also showed bad traits. 

 In spite of all the evidence pointing to his irre- 

 sponsibility he was condemned to be shot. 



This case strongly reminds one of the celebrated 

 criminal family of the ' Jukes ' in New York state. 

 There, too, the members of this monstrous family 

 were not all afflicted with the same kind of dis- 

 ease, but weak-mindedness, pauperism, obscenity, 



thievishness, and burglarism showed themselves ia 

 different branches of the family. This inter-rela- 

 tion of moral and mental insanity, especially in 

 their hereditary forms, has recently been attract- 

 ing much attention. Dr. Maudsley has noted the 

 great prevalence of moral failings in epileptics and 

 imbeciles. K^raft-Ebbing, a German alienist, 

 corroborates these observations ; and M. Lombroso 

 has now attempted to describe some bodily pecu- 

 liarities common to many of these defective 

 classes. He finds that in moral insanity as in 

 epilepsy the stature and weight are often 13 per 

 cent superior to the normal mean. There is 

 generally, too, an asymmetry of the cranium and 

 other parts. So, too, in face characteristics, epi- 

 leptics show certain peculiarities which are also 

 found in persons defective from birth. The ears 

 are rounded, the cheek-bones prominent, the 

 forehead wrinkled, the beard wanting, the 

 jawbones exaggerated, the face asymmetrical, the 

 forehead low and with a hunted expression among 

 the men. Most of these characteristics are evident 

 in the women as well, who frequently have a 

 masculme expression. Obtuse sensibility and eye 

 troubles are common among them. But the 

 chief points of contact will always be their psychol- 

 ogy, and for this one must consult the larger 

 works of Lombroso and others. 



The study of the bodily or anthropometric pecu- 

 liarities of these defective classes is getting to be a 

 very favorite line of work. Quite an original 

 contribution to this subject is the attempt of 

 Messrs. Lombroso and Cougnet to detect the effect 

 of different states of the emotion on the pulse 

 beat. They took the tracing of the sphygmogi'aph 

 in sad and gay moods. They excited the amor- 

 ous passion, or showed a piece of gold, or a glass 

 of wine, or paid the person a high compliment. 

 The sexual passion and the glass of wine modified 

 the course of the pulse, the money did so still 

 more, and vanity the most. In short, criminals 

 are a very vain class of beings. 



The question of bodily asymmetry has been 

 frequently referred to, and is generally recognized 

 as an important symptom not only in the head 

 measurement, but also in all the properties com- 

 mon to the two sides of the body. M. Lombroso 

 has recently measured the local sensibihty ^ of the 

 skin on the two sides of the body in the sane, in- 

 sane, blind, and deaf mutes. In normal persons 

 the sensibility on the right side is 6 per cent better 

 than on the left. In 100 persons there is an 

 equal sensibility on the two sides in 44 ; left 



1 This was done in the usual manner. A pair of compass 

 points are applied to a definite region and moved so far 

 apart until the subject can just discriminate that two 

 points are applied (and not one). 



