| Show AN EXPERT ON INSANITY I arrived In Paris In 1SC1 a boy with my head full of philology and comparative com-parative physiology I soon saw that the most serious lack In this science was that of anatomical and anthropological anthropo-logical knowledge They were studying Insanity In general without studying Individual lunatics I Insisted that we should study lunatics as we would a special variety of the human race noting no-ting the skin tho form the skull und particularly time functions sensibility etc My colleagues laughed at me and called me the doctor of the steelyard Little by little the Idea prevailed and now they seem almost to have forgotten forgot-ten who It won that introduced the new somatic school I had u strong desire to study the morally insane who have since been shown to bo the born criminals crim-inals It was a principle of mine to duny everything which I did not see and as there were none of those In our clinic I was inclined to deny their existence ex-istence Nevertheless to make sure of the facts I commenced to occupy myself my-self with criminals to frequent prisons and carefully to gather skulls and brains of prisoners One evening there died In one of the prisons of the city a celebrated brigand robber and Incendiary who had often escaped es-caped by means of his great tgillty Upon the death of this man who was the tine type nf the born criminal and morally insane I examined exam-ined his skull It presented an enormous enor-mous median occipital fossa In place of the occipital median spine which occurs oc-curs In the Interior of the skull This Is a characteristic wanting In the superior su-perior apes and existing In all other vertebrates I made the autopsy In the yard of the prison In the early hours of the morning The day was very foggy In the winter of 1864 The weather weath-er and the place did not permit me to make thorough autopsy but I recollect recol-lect how at that moment the whole Idea of my future work rose before me like a picture I Instantly perceived that the criminal must be a survival of the primitive man and the carnivorous carnivor-ous animals The idea though yet embryonic em-bryonic was perfected a few days later when I was called as an expert by the tribunal of Bergamo In the case of a sort of Jack the Ripper one Ver zenti This young peasant with cross eyes and enormous Jaws was possessed possess-ed with a desljeto disembowel chew anjl O vi SnrKpu of women young and old who happened crp his path He afterwards confided to me > secJet tho great erotic pleasure which he eS22w enced In this Professor Caesar Lom broso In the September Forum |
