Crime and the Surgeon’s Knife

Hawera Star, Volume L, 25 October 1930, Page 9

Crime and the Surgeon’s Knife

Samuel Butler is Vindicated

tt-V OR some centuries civilised countries |*H| have been trying- all sorts of methods of 1 reforming the criminal and making him

a decent and useful member of society. But surely, of all the strange plans that have been tried that, which is now coming into favour in the United States, of using the surgeon’s knife on crooks and thugs to transform them into saints, is the strangest. In this article is given some account of how surgeons are trying to reform criminals witli the knife.

America is certainly a land of wonders. It is the land of criminals par excellence, and it is also the land of strange experiments in the treatment of prisoners.

. . .In many States prison discipline is interfered with by philanthropic bodies, who seem to look upon the criminal as a wilful child, who merely; wants - kind treatment to become a useful citizen. The result- is that many prisons are dreadfully overcrowded, because, so far from holding out terrors to the wrongdoer, prison is rather a pleasant place in -which evildoers like to spend a holiday.

But the most astonishing example of prison reform is that now being carried out at San Quentin Prison, California. Dr Ralph Reynolds, of San Francisco, seems to have the idea that crime is largely the result of glands, and he proposes to eradicate crime by operating on the glands of the prisoners.

Dr Reynolds found in the course of his investigations that a large number of the prisoners at San Quentin were suffering from an abnormal condition of the endocrine glands, which empty into the blood system. Perpetrators of crimes of violence were found to have something wrong with their thyroid glands, and forgers and some other criminals showed an abnormal condition of the pituitary gland. This pearshaped body, about the size of a haricot bean, lies at the base of the brain.

By operating on about 60 of the criminals and administering gland extract, not only the physical condition, but the mental and moral condition also, is said to have been improved. Dr Reynolds and Dr Stanley, the "physician of San Quentin Prison, have, as a result of their experiments, come to the conclusion that the socalled criminal instinct may be removed from the minds of men and women by operation, and that potential criminality may be eliminated by treating the glands in youth. If the opinion of these doctors is confirmed, it will mean that over or under secretion of some gland is responsible for the greater part of the crime and lawlessness found in the world today.

The attention of Dr Reynolds was first directed to this matter as a result, of his experimental researches in schools for backward and wayward children in San Francisco.

“My work has taken me,” ho says, “into the medical direction of two institutions, involving about 200 children. In virtually every backward or wayward child, boy or girl, I have been able to sec a physical departure from normal. In many that as yet are neither backward nor wayward, I saw evidence of the future de-

Astonishing Prison Reform in California

velopment of abnormal conditions in the gland svstem.

“There is the child of low, often moronic mind, who can do good work with his hands, but not with his brain. He is mistrained, and because his mind does not respond to the training given him, he is called a ‘dumb-bell,’ or worse. He goes out into the world unprepared to earn what the world calls air ‘honest living.’ He is drawn into a gang, he is involved in a liold-up or a gang light, the Law gets him, and he, with an anti-social inclination in his subnormal mind, becomes a criminal.”

In many cases, though not. all, Dr Reynolds states, such a child will be found possessed of an abnormal thyroid or pituitary, gland, and at the back of him will lie a history of ancestors similarly affected.

‘‘Nofv many children,” continues the doctor, “who show'visible endocrine disturbances have pleasant types of mind, never brilliant, often below normal, but usually best described as ‘fat and good-natured.’ Their obesity or extreme fatness can be reduced by the correction of their glandular disturbances, and with such reduction comes an increase in industry and efficiency. The moronic mind cannot be improved, but it can be given a sound body, and it can be given the training for work with the hands which will enable its possessor to win and maintain an honest foothold in society.

“What we must learn about children is why one becomes a criminal and another does not. Then we must treat the subnormal child by medicine or by surgery to restore the chemical balance of the body. This done, we must prepare him or her to earn an adequate living, so that the economic incentive of crime, as well as the mental receptivity to criminal ideas may be removed. By so doing we shall prevent crime. Indeed, we are so preventing it in the schools mentioned. ’ ’

Referring to the treatment of criminals, Dr Reynolds states that the records of the crimes committed by these men showed that in approximately 70 per cent, of the cases suffering from derangements of the thyroid gland, the men had committed crimes of violence, such hs murder or assault.

The experiments at San Quentin have aroused great interest among students of criminology in America, and in the near future large groups of prisoners at this gaol, and in other penal institutions, are to be classified as to the type of crime committed, and then studied as to gl an dul ar disturb an ces.

It is curious how the imaginings of the novelists in one generation become facts of science in the next. AVc have seen how the imaginary submarine of Jules A r erne, and his “Clipper of the Clouds,” together with Mr H. G. AV ells’ “AVar in the Air,” laughed at as impossible when they were described, became literal fact a few years later.

Now the seemingly quaint idea of Samuel Butler, once of New Zealand, that crime was treated as a disease in his imaginary country called Erewhon, is becoming a fact in the United States.