These causes, although apparently as important as heredity, are in fact, decidedly less so. Both disease and trauma may intensify or call forth latent perversity, but they are less frequently the cause of it. There are, however, certain cases in which traumatism meningitis, typhus, or other diseases that affect the brain have undoubtedly evoked criminal tendencies in individuals hitherto normal. Twenty out of 290 criminals studied by my father with minute care had suffered from injury to the head in childhood; and recently a case came under his notice in which a youth of good family and excellent character received an injury to his head at the age of fourteen and became epileptic, developing subsequently into a gambler, thief, and murderer. Such cases, however, are not very common. There is one disease that without other causes--either inherited degeneracy or vices resulting from a bad education and environment--is capable of transforming a healthy individual into a vicious, hopelessly evil being. That disease is alcoholism, which has been discussed in a previous chapter, but to which I must refer briefly again, because it is such an important factor of criminality. Temporary drunkenness alone will give rise to crime, since it inflames the passions, obscures the mental and moral faculties, and destroys all sense of decency, causing men to commit offences in a state of automatism or a species of somnambulism. Sometimes drunkenness produces kleptomania. A slight excess in drinking will cause men of absolute honesty to appropriate any objects they can lay their hands upon. When the effects of drink have worn off, they feel shame and remorse and hasten to restore the stolen goods. Alcohol, however, more often causes violence. An officer known to my father, when drunk, twice attempted to run his sword through his friends and his own attendant. Among Oriental sects of murderers, as is well known, homicidal fury was excited and maintained by a drink brewed for the purpose from hemp-seed. Büchner shows that dishonest instincts can be developed in bees by a special food consisting of honey mixed with brandy. The insects acquire a taste for this drink in the same way as human beings do, and under its influence cease to work. Ants show similar symptoms after narcosis by means of chloroform. Their bodies remain motionless, with the exception of their heads, with which they snap at all who approach them.