This is the second edition of a work based, if I remember rightly, on a thesis for the doctorate published in 1888. It is very considerably modified, being practically, as the publisher claims, a new book. The text of the author, who has written largely in periodicals upon medico-psychology and criminal anthropology, is that the murderous psychosis is infectious, as microbic diseases are. Part I deals with the general phases of this contagion: heredity, prison companionship, the witnessing of executions, reading. Part II treats of special manifestations: vitriol throwing, poisoning, etc. The author's remarks on the Whitechapel murders and London prostitution are just; but it is going beyond the bounds of righteous indignation to insult good liquor by calling it 'wisky.' A good many of the English names have suffered in this way (cf. p. 155, e.g.). Part III takes us, by way of murder with an accomplice or accomplices, to murder regarded as epidemic and endemic. The chapter on anarchist crimes, with its exhaustive list, will be read just now with special interest. One of the features of the new edition is its richness of detailed illustration. May it not fall into the hands of any one in whose mental system the virus is likely to 'take'! Appended is a bibliography, intended to supplement those of Ferri (1893) and MacDonald (1893).
The preface by Dr. Corre, the criminologist of Brest, is described by the publisher as 'très belle,' and the description is not unmerited. It is very pleasant reading; dealing, in a light and popular vein, with the antiquity of crime, the justification of an absolutely free press, etc. But it is a bad custom, this of getting another man to write the preface to your book; and must be condemned 'on principle.'
M. Durand is a veteran campaigner against the marvelous. His first book—Électrodynamisme vital, issued under the pseudonym of Philips—was published in 1855; and his later volumes are dated 1860, 1868, 1869, 1871, 1886, 1888. No wonder that he should write, more in sorrow than in anger, to rebuke the younger generation,—MM. Binet, Féré, Gilles de la Tourette, Pierre Janet,—for making M. Charcot "faire de l'hypnotisme une véritable science"! Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi.
M. Durand will guide the reader, at his pleasure, through the 'night of mystery and horror' that shrouds the mesmeric hemisphere of hypnotics, or over the civilized and illuminated continents of Braidism and Fario-Grimism. Biomagnetism, telepathy, hypotaxy, expressed suggestion, sensorial fascination, ideoplastia, electro-biology, the philosophy of * revenants,' zoömagnetics, spiritism,—John Wellington Wells, off the stage, for six francs!
