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24 is wholly inadequate to describe the several classes of male persons afflicted with sexual inversion. They clearly expect, in course of time, a general mitigation of the penalties in force against such individuals. According to them, the penal laws of North Germany, on the occasion of their last revision, would probably have been altered, had not the jurists felt that the popular belief in the criminality of pæderasts ought to be considered. Consequently, a large number of irresponsible persons, in the opinion of experts like Casper and Liman, are still exposed to punishment by laws enacted under the influence of vulgar errors.

These writers are not concerned with the framing of codes, nor again with the psychological diagnosis of accused persons. It is their business to lay down rules whereby a medical authority, consulted in a doubtful case, may form his own view as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. Their attention is therefore mainly directed to the detection of signs upon the bodies of incriminated individuals.

This question of physical diagnosis leads them into a severe critique of Tardieu. Their polemic attacks each of the points which he attempted to establish. I must content myself by referring to the passage of their work which deals with the important topic. Suffice it here to say that they reject all signs as worse than doubtful, except a certain deformation of one part of the body, which may possibly be taken as the proof of habitual prostitution, when it occurs in quite young persons. Of course they admit that wounds, violent