respect of certain forms of blunting of cutaneous sensibility and other sensory perceptions. It must also be remembered that Lombroso’s conception of epilepsy was a very wide one: “To-day, in fact, in accordance with the completely harmonious results of clinical and experimental pathological research, epilepsy has been resolved into a circumscribed stimulation of the cerebral cortex, resulting in paroxysms, sometimes momentary, sometimes of long duration, but always periodic, and always superposed upon a degenerate foundation, whether this foundation be inherited, or acquired through the abuse of alcohol, in consequence of injury to the skull, etc.” As regards this theory that epilepsy is a basic element in the criminal nature, Lombroso finds a link between epilepsy and criminality in certain types of character which, long before his time, certain alienists—especially those of England—had described as quite specific, and as differing entirely from ordinary insanity. As the psychiatric name for these types, the English phrase “moral insanity” has been widely accepted. Such cases are regarded by Lombroso as developmental stages on the way to the formation of the criminal nature. Writing on this subject, he says (German edition, p. 521): “Just as moral insanity passes insensibly into its higher degree—born criminality—so also the epileptic criminal, when his liability to acute or to larval paroxysms has become chronic, exhibits the more advanced manifestation of moral insanity. In the less developed periods we cannot distinguish between these types; and just as two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,[32] so also, undoubtedly, born criminality and moral insanity are both of them nothing more than variants of epilepsy (Griesinger terms them “epileptoid states”).” In order to give us a more vivid idea of these epileptoid states, Lombroso groups them as follows: First degree, larval epilepsy. Second degree, chronic epilepsy. Third degree, moral insanity. Fourth degree, congenital criminality. Fifth degree, criminality by passion.