Whilst he never ignored clinical observation and the study of the sensory functions, he gave the first place to weights and measurements: these were to him the guarantees of an exact method of procedure; and he was led to borrow the instruments and methods of anthropology on account of his postulate for an anthropology of lunatics and criminals. In his interpretation of the facts thus obtained he was guided chiefly by the sane materialism of Moleschott and by the Darwinian idea of the variability of races. As a disciple of Vico, he saw nothing absurd in the view that an apparently purely social phenomenon, such as crime, can be organically caused. The chance discovery of theromorphism (the expression is Virchow’s, and denotes the presence in man of certain bodily peculiarities of one of the lower animals) in the skulls of certain criminals, in the year 1870, finally gave rise to the formulation of a uniform hypothesis regarding the nature of criminality. Before the publication, in 1871, of the elements of this theory, Lombroso was able to devote a year to the study of the inmates of a large prison, being at the time Medical Superintendent of the Provincial Asylum at Pesaro, where there was also a large penitentiary. During the years 1871 to 1876, when he was once more lecturer and professor-extraordinary at Pavia[6]—years during which he published his studies on pellagra, and, in addition, a number of anthropological and purely psychiatric works—he was also much occupied with the anatomical post-mortem study of the bodies of criminals. After 1876, when he came to Turin[7] as professor of forensic medicine, being also physician to the great prison in that town for prisoners awaiting trial, he was able to examine most minutely, according to his own methods, two hundred prisoners every year, whilst a much greater number were subjected at least to ordinary clinical examination. This inconsiderable and very poorly-paid official position led him, without abandoning his unwearied researches into pellagra, to devote his chief attention day by day to the subject of criminal anthropology. It was in the course of these investigations, and of the controversies to which the publication of his results gave rise, that he first became acquainted with the work of his predecessors in the same field. This has been demonstrated to me by incontrovertible evidence. As predecessors must be named some of the adherents of Gall’s theories regarding the skull: the French physiologist and physician, Despine; the French psychiatrist, Morel; and three English medical men—one, the psychiatrist and distinguished anthropologist, Prichard, the other two prison surgeons, Nicolson and Bruce Thomson.