Chapter II: Mediæval and Modern Penology

Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the
intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
little children “even on Friday”--Pope Stephen VI. brings
the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern
conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval
penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--“Blue Laws” a great
advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and penal
responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity of
criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense--
Theories of the origin and nature of crime--Intelligence not
always to be measured by the size of the encephalon--
Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo
Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the
penal codes of to-day--Measures proposed by Lombroso and his
school--Their conclusions not sustained by facts--Crime
through hypnotic suggestion--Difficulty of defining
insanity--Coleridge’s definition too inclusive--
Predestination and evolution--Criminality among the lower
animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
Schopenhauer’s doctrine of responsibility for character--
Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie
Jeanneret--“Method in Madness” not uncommon--Social safety
the supreme law--Application of this principle to
“Cranks”--Spirit of imitation peculiarly strong in such
classes--Contagiousness of crime--Criminology now in a
period of transition _p._ 193