Despite the scant and conflicting testimony of cerebrologists with
reference to the brain defects of criminals, there is so much clinical
evidence of the aberration of morals and conduct from brain disease or
injury that we are justified in believing that brain defects of some
kind affecting the mental and moral faculties is the _fons origo_
of criminality. This defect, as already seen, may be congenital or
acquired, and may consist of a lack of development due to vicious
environment and faulty education, mental and physical.
The fountain from which crime arises, says this authority, is some form
of disease, or defect of the brain. And such disease or defect may be
inherited, or may be caused by bad environment: by improper teaching,
food, and exercise. To feel the full force of this statement we must
bear in mind that "children are not born with intellect and conscience,
but only with capacities for their development."
Therefore, if the capacities for intellect and morals are _not_
developed, we cannot expect to find the intellect and morals.
In other words, we have no right to hope nor to expect that the
neglected child will grow up into the good and clever man.
Neither is it reasonable to hope for a cure by pumping moral lessons
into a brain in which no moral sense has been developed.
That epilepsy has a bad effect on morals, and that epileptics are often
untruthful, treacherous, and dangerous is as well known as that epilepsy
is a form of degeneracy, and is often caused by improper feeding and
neglect in childhood.
Hysteria also affects the moral nerves of the brain. Dr. Lydston says:
Hysterical women often bring accusations of crime against others. The
victim is generally a man, and the alleged crime, assault. Physicians
recognise this as one of the dangers to be guarded against in their
work. Hysterical women in the primary stage of anaesthesia, sometimes
imagine themselves the victims of assault. In one well-known case the
woman accused a dentist of assault while he was administering nitrous
oxide to her. Her husband was in the room during the imaginary assault.
Dr. Lydston tells us that Flesch examined the brains of fifty criminals,
and found imperfections in all.
In twenty-eight he found, in different cases, meningeal disease, such
as adhesions, pachy-meningitis, interna hæmorrhagica, tubercular
meningitis, leptomeningitis, edema of the pia mater, and hæmorrhagic
spinal meningitis; also atheroma of the bisillary arteries, cortical
atrophy, and cerebral haemorrhage. In most cases the pathologic
conditions were not associated with the psychoses that are usually found
under such circumstances.
How many men have been hanged or sent to prison who ought to have been
sent to lunatic asylums? According to Dr. Lydston, very many. As bearing
upon that point I quote two passages from _The Diseases of Society_,
which "give one furiously to think." The first is from page 172:
Cases of moral turpitude, _mania furiosa_, and other mental disturbances
are met with in which the patient is harshly treated, because of
supposed moral perverseness, and only the autopsy has shown how
undeservedly the patient has been condemned. When a tumour or other
disease of the brain is found in a punished criminal, the case is most
pathetic.
The other passage is from page 221, and is as follows:
If the foregoing premises be correct, vice and crime will be one day
shown more definitely than ever to be a matter to be dealt with by
medical science rather than by law.
The "foregoing premises" here alluded to concern the increase in vice
and crime through autotoxemia, or unconscious self-poisoning, due to
over-strain and other evil conditions of life.
As to this self-poisoning, a few words may be said. It is known that
birds who die of fright are poisonous. That is because the violence of
the emotion, by some chemical action, evolves poison.
It is also known that when the human system is out of order it secretes
poison. This poison affects the brain, and excites the baser passions,
or injures the moral sense.
Self-poisoning may be due to the presence of poisonous matter in the
system, or to the over-strain, or over-excitement, of business, or
trouble.
We all know the effects of violent anger, of violent grief, or violent
love, or violent emotion of any kind upon the health. We know also the
effect of "worry," and the effects of fatigue and of improper food.
One of these effects is self-poisoning, and one of the results of
self-poisoning is brain sickness, resulting often in vice or in crime.
We find, then, that disease may be caused by neglect in childhood, by
starvation or improper food, by over-work, by terror, by excitement, and
by worry, amongst a thousand other causes.
And we find that disease affects the brain, and very often leads to
vice, to crime, to dishonesty, falsehood, and impurity.
And disease is one part of our environment.
A wound or a shock may have a wonderful effect on the mind. A man may
slip and strike his head on a stone, and may get up an idiot A gunshot
wound in the neck, a sword-cut on the head, may cause madness, or may
cause an injury of the brain which will quite change the injured man's
moral nature.
As to the effects of such accidents on the mind there are many
interesting particulars in Lombroso's book, _The Man of Genius_, from
which I am tempted to quote some lines:
It has frequently happened that injuries to the head, and acute
diseases, those frequent causes of insanity, have changed a very
ordinary individual into a man of genius.... Gratry, a mediocre singer,
became a great master after a beam had fractured his skull. Mabillon,
almost an idiot from childhood, fell down a stone staircase at the
age of twenty-six, and so badly injured his skull that it had to be
trepanned; from that time he displayed the characteristics of genius....
Wallenstein was looked upon as a fool until one day he fell out of a
window, and henceforward began to show remarkable ability.
Lombroso also gives many examples and proofs of the influence of weather
and climate on the mind; but for these I have no room.
Now, disease, and weather, and climate, and injuries are all parts of
environment.