Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/717

 PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE CRIME 703

conditions generally a poor hospital patient who is not likely to have friends to cause trouble in case of failure. If the patient dies, the secret is preserved in the bosom of the investigator, or shared with a few professional brethren ; if the experiment is a success, all the world rejoices, and the discoverer is written down in history as a benefactor of the race, which he surely is. Never- theless, progress must be slow and uncertain if investigation can only be carried on under such difficulties which absolutely forbid all scientific investigation in many fields. In the meant ime hundreds of thousands of our fellow-men in our own country alone are dying annually of diseases that should be under our control, and all because our investigations must be confined almost exclusively to animals. And yet, is not one human life worth more than the lives of many animals ? Are not the lives of hundreds of thousands of more account than the few score of murderers whose lives are thrown away annually for the sake of vengeance ? We cannot afford to waste a single human life, not even the life of a murderer, because his life may be used to save countless lives.

The punishment of every condemned murderer should, there- fore, be turned to account for the lasting benefit of mankind. A human experiment station is needed, and the condemned murderer is the subject on which the experiments should be made, and made repeatedly so long as he may live. His death in this way would satisfy all the ends of punishment : the majesty of the law, which he ruthlessly violated, would be vindi- cated ; as a warning to others it would have all the deterrent value attached to the present forms of capital punishment, and probably a greater value ; the opportunity for his spiritual wel- fare would not be diminished ; and, in addition, his death would offer unlimited possibilities for the benefit of society, for repair- ing the injury he had wrought. In short, his punishment would have a direct relation to the offense it would fit the crime.

The use of such living human subjects for experimental pur- poses would open a vast field for the relief of human ills new and exact knowledge in anatomy, physiology, psychology, crimi- nology, and every branch of therapeutic medicine. As is more