CESARE LOMBROSO

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 4

CESARE LOMBROSO

HIS LIFE'S WORK i ATTITUDE TO CRIME On November 18 was the centenary ; of the birth of Cesare Lombroso. He 1 was born in Verona in 1836, and died in 1 1909. He was descended from a family ' of North African Jews who had set--1 tied in North Italy several centuries ; before. Many of them had been culti- ; vated men and successful merchants. A brother of one of his direct ances- ; tors protested energetically in Virginia, in North America, in the seventeenth century, against the belief in witchcraft. He declared the reputed witches ', were merely victims of abnormal psychology or hysteria. When Lombroso , was a child Verona passed into the control of the Habsburgs, and Jews were debarred from higher education. His mother insisted on moving to a town where her children might be educated: His father had been influenced by the French conceptions of freedom, and was unable to adapt himself to the conditions of Austrian terrorism. Those circumstances predisposed Lombroso to criticise the theories taught at the universities by professors who were usually the sons of rich conservatives (says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian"). He was strongly opposed to the vitalistic philosophies of biology so often advocated by. members of those social classes; ,Ho said that th.e educational atmosphere was that of persistent medievalism "literally restored by the might of the bayonets of 1814." The memory of the forcible discipline was so hateful that in later life it used to visit him like a nightmare in dreams. He learned from Vico, whose works were studied in secret, the importance of the relation of organic development in man to the structure and life of human society. The works of Marzolo on philology introduced to him the notion of evolution in religion and law. Marzolo said that Lombroso was the first to understand his aims. He went to visit him in order to make his acquaintance, and was astonished to And that Lombroso was only a sixteen-year-old youth. Lombroso read widely, but he had no early training in the clinical study of mental disorder. He took a medical degree at Vienna in 1856, and there acquired the habit of observation through contact with German science. He avoided the current extreme speculation on the psychology of mental disorder and crime, and began to study the pathological anatomy of the insane, criminal lunatics, and criminals. But from the start he had the idea that the exact measurement of skulls and other anatomical features would lead to definite distinctions between sane and insane criminals, lunatics, and epileptics. As the superintendent and surgeon of a mental hospital he had opportunities for research. In 1870 he noticed in the skulls of certain criminals anatomical peculiarities which were supposed to be characteristic of the lower animals. This helped to confirm his notion of the existence of a specific criminal type. He de- i duced from this notion that death, sejv ; .tenceg.jsereHesseatial with \

certain criminal types, and he did not agree with the more extreme advocates of prison reform. 'He attributed'great weight to what is now called hereditary constitution. Those who were, in his opinion, by constitution criminal could not be improved b3 r any treat* ment. But he also believed in the ex« istence of many varieties of criminals, ' most of which would be improved .by; ! more rational treatment. ! HIS ATTACKS ON THE WEALTHY, About 1870 he was active in research : concerning the disease pellagra. Thii ■ afflicted large numbers of poor peasants in Italy. Patients ■■ exhibit ■ severe disturbances of • the digestion, , skin, and nerves, and, finally, mental ■ disorder. Lombroso observed that the disease did not attack . neighbouring ground landlords and bailiffs. • As maize was the chief food of the whole population, he concluded that pellagra must be due to bad maize. Ha supposed that the bad maize, eaten by the poor, but not by the rich, cbn» tained some poison which produced the disease. He contended that if the poor peasants had good maize they would be free from the disease; He therefore opposed the Italian Governmental tariffs on food, which kept up the price of maize and made the best qualities too expensive to be bought by the poor. He wag thereupon attacked by the rich. He lost nearly all of his large private practice among the well-to-do. Lombroso said that hatred to novelty was a deep-rooted passion, and wheii economic class interests are combined; with it, "then woe to the innovator. As Macaulay said, if the Newtonian' law had been opposed to any class interest, there would have been /no lack of opposition to the doctrine oi universal gravitation." It is now known that there is much truth in Lombroso's general views' on thq pellagra problem. He rightly conj tended that it was due to malnutri* tion; and was related to economics and social interests. Recent research has shown that it is not due to a poison in maize, but to a deficiency of vit# min B2 in diets poor in flesh, milk, and cheese. The poor peasants sulj fered from pellagra because they virtually none of these, whereas landlords had enough animal proteiij to make a balanced diet., The ruin of Lombroso's lucrative prfc vatc practice left him with more tima for the study of abnormal psychology and the anatomy of animals. Hi worked ceaselessly. His example o\ incessant collection. of fact and obsec» vation contributed much towards tfl'q creation of the modern naturalistic ai> titude to crime. Combined with this attitude, he had. a stimulating powei! of speculation. His weakness as a scientist consisted in forming fixed ideas, and then conducting immensa labours of observation and pleasure* ment in order to confirm them. Bu( when many of the ideas were ultimate ly disproved, the habit of experiment and observation, which he had done, so much to develop in the study ol criminal psychology, remained, essentially a great writer, who had been forced into medical science ia order to earn a living. His extremely interesting book on "The Man ol Genius" shows that he is to be comi pared wj.th rather than 'Darwin," . ... ...,; > a