Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/617

Rh of Forensic Medicine at the University of Turin, who may be regarded as the inaugurator of the modern science of criminal anthropology, the thinker whose work on Criminal Man (L'Uomo Delinquente) had, on its appearance in 1889, an influence as decisive as had in its day the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. In the vexed question that is now waging as to the treatment of criminals, in which we find ranged on one side men like W. Z. Brockway, of the Elmira Reformatory, and on the other an authority such as Mr. William Tallack, of the Howard Association, a society that bears the name of the great English prison philanthropist and exists for the purpose of alleviating the malefactor's pain, it is well to go to the fountain head and hear what Lombroso has to say on the point.

Now, Lombroso starts from the premise that a reason must exist why certain men are impelled by their very nature to commit crimes, and that hence there must be a difference in their very organism sufficiently marked to distinguish normal men from those morally or mentally mad. In the various medical clinics numerous and minute psychiatric observations, calculations of the most insignificant abnormities in the eurythmia of the human body, confrontation and establishment of mathematical data, have all combined to advance the science of criminal anthropology, so that it has become possible to divide mankind into three great principal classes—normal men, criminal men, and madmen. Now, Prof. Lombroso, from his own experience and that of the scholars who work under his direction—many of whom, like Prof. Enrico Ferri, have become almost as prominent as himself—had come some while ago to the conclusion that an absolute reform is required in the old methods of criminal punishment, and the first thing to do was to distinguish with great care the congenital criminal from the madman. The professor condemns rigorously the carelessness with which the legal tribunals pronounce sentences, and points out with much acumen that inconvenience, not to say irreparable harm, is thus done, mischief that always accrues to the detriment of those who perform their duty, and who surely have a right to be protected by the state. Hence, says Lombroso, it is above all others the magistrate who should pursue the study of criminal anthropology, because while every one of those who have had contact with malefactors, such as the members of their own family and prison directors, regard them as men different from others—that is, persons of weak mind or almost insane, and never, or at least hardly ever, susceptible of improvement; while the psychiatrist finds it impossible in most cases to distinguish clearly between madness and guilt, the legislator, on his part, rarely gives heed to the acute criticisms of the alienist, to the timid objections of the prison officials. As a rule.