Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/378

This page needs to be proofread.

Criminal Anthropology in Italy. being actually published, so much talent did they show. Medicine was the study to which he devoted himself, and his first in dependent researches were directed to ex amining into the causes that produce the idiotism and the pellagra that exist, unfortu nately, so largely in Lombardy and Liguria. His treatise on this theme attracted the attention of no less a person than Professor Virchow. After fighting for the independ ence of Italy in 1859, he was appointed professor of psychiatry at Pavia, where he founded a psychiatric museum. From Pavia he passed to Pesaro, as director of the Gov ernment mad-house, and thence to Turin as professor of forensic medicine, a position he still retains. It was in his native Turin that he began those original studies destined to make his name famous over all the globe. Endowed by nature with a strong intel ligence, a robust will, and a keen intellectual curiosity, he was indifferent to the incredu lous smile, the sarcasms, that greeted his first efforts at solving problems hitherto held insoluble. Very bitter, very hard were his struggles — how hard only those can appreciate who have talked with Lombroso in intimacy, and have noted the pained scorn with which he speaks of his adver saries — adversaries some of whom are not silenced to this hour. But his science, his studies conquered, which if not always com plete yet are always serious, wherefore criminal anthropology, a mere infant some thirty years ago, may to-day be said to be adult; a raw empire but a while ago, to day a science, young if you will, but vital and destined to overturn the facile, fantastic monuments erected by so many penalists. The work with which Lombroso will go down to posterity is a huge book, huge in every sense of the word, in which criminal man is studied on a scientific basis. We refer to the " Uomo Delinquente," of which its author has published most recently a new, revised, and enlarged edition, wrestling with new facts, new observations, and new deduc

347

tions. This edition is limited to one hun dred copies, perhaps to allow its prolific author soon to issue another, enriched with yet more facts, yet more acute deductions. It is dedicated to Max Nordau, the author of that noted book, "Degeneration," who had in his turn dedicated his work to his master, Cesare Lombroso. The dedication reads thus: " To you I have wished to dedicate this volume with which I close my studies on human degeneration, as to the most sincere friend I have found in the sad course of my scientific life, and as to the one who has wrested fecund fruits from the new doctrines I have attempted to introduce into the scientific world." Needless to say that Lombroso is the very first person to admit that in the almost virgin field of criminal anthropology there is still much to do, and that Science has not yet spoken her last word : but it is his magic wand that has indicated the horizon and has swept over vast new areas, often with lightning rapidity and intuition. Thus the base of the new edifice was laid, and the rest of the new monument rose up rapidly around it, not withstanding, its occasional faultiness, pointed out eagerly by adverse scientists, criticisms that could not shake down the edifice, for its base was too solid and strong. Gradu ally a few apostles of the new science gathered around Lombroso, and although Morselli, one of the most acute and cultured observers, after a time severed himself from the group and joined the French schismatics, nevertheless the little compact mass moved from success to success, from triumph to triumph, up to the late ultimate triumph at Geneva. Another of Lombroso's books which aroused much discussion and which may almost be said to have founded yet another school, if we may so designate the group de voted to the study of another branch of an thropology, was " Genio o Follia," which largely helped to make its author's name known, even outside of strictly scientific cir