Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
I have demonstrated the hysterical and epileptic basis in the
anarchists and regicides Felicot, Monges, and Caserio, and
particularly in a vagabond anarchist, full of cranial anomalies, who
told me, when I questioned him concerning political reforms, "Do not
speak to me of them, for as soon as I begin to think about them I am
taken with a vertigo and fall down"; so that it seems to me possible
to establish a psycho-epileptic equivalent in extreme political
innovators, an equivalent which is further manifest in their vanity,
rising sometimes to megalomania, in their intermittent geniality, and
especially in their great impulsiveness. There was also latent in
Luccheni an indirect disposition to suicide, which I have found in
other political criminals, like Oliva, Nobiling, and Passananti,[Q]
who, having conceived a dislike for the king, made an attempt on his
life; and especially in Henry, who rejected the defense of his
advocate and his mother based on the insanity of his father, remarking
that it was the advocate's business to defend, his to die; and in that
Roumanian who was photographed in a portrait that I have reproduced,
in the act of committing suicide.[R] Luccheni, too, believed he would
be condemned to death, and was much disappointed when he learned that
there was no such penalty in the canton where he committed the crime.
[Footnote Q: See my Delitto politico, 1890.]
[Footnote R: Ibid.]
It may have been morbid vanity that prompted the exclamation he was
heard to make, "I wanted to kill some great person, so as to get my
name in the papers" (Gautier).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account