For a number of years it has been known to all but a few ancient
physicians—survivals from an exhausted régime—that all disease is
caused by _bacilli_, which worm themselves into the organs that
secrete health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The
medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and
significance of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account
for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes,
home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the
testimony of so eminent bacteriologers as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their
carping is as that of the impatient angler. The _bacillus_ is not
to be denied; he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until
evicted. Doubtless we may confidently expect his eventual supersession
by a fresher and more ingenious disturber of the physiological peace,
but he is now chief among ten thousand evils and the one altogether
lovely, and it is futile to attempt to read him out of the party.
It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the criminal
impulse in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must discover the
_bacillus_ of crime, which we now know is merely disease with
another name. To that end we think that the bodies of hanged assassins
and such patients of low degree as have been gathered to their fathers
by the cares of public office or consumed by the rust of inactivity
in prison should be handed over to a microscopical society for
examination. The bore, too, offers a fine field for research, and might
justly enough be examined alive. Whether there is one general—or as the
ancient and honorable orders prefer to say, “grand”—_bacillus_,
producing a general (or grand) criminal impulse generating a
multitude of sins, or an infinite number of well defined and several
_bacilli_, each inciting to a particular crime, is a question
to the determination of which the most distinguished microscopist
might be proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the latter is
the case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for clearly the
patient afflicted with chronic assassination will require different
medicines from those which might be efficacious in a gentleman
suffering from constitutional theft or the desire to represent his
district in Congress. But it is permitted to us to hope that all the
crimes, like all the arts, are essentially one; that murder, commerce
and respectability are but different symptoms of the same physical
disorder, at the back of which is a microbe vincible to a single
medicament, albeit the same awaits discovery.
In the fascinating theory of the unity of crime we may not unreasonably
hope to find another evidence of the brotherhood of man, another
spiritual bond tending to draw the several classes of society more
closely together. If such should be the practical effect of the great
truth something will have been gained, even if the discovery of a
suitable medicine to restore our enemies to health be delayed until all
too late to save them from rude and primitive treatment by the sheriff.
1893.