Here and there a solitary voice has been heard, even amongst the classical experts, objecting to this tendency towards dogmatic uniformity; but it has had no influence. The question brought forward by M. D'Alinge at the Prison Congress in London _(Proceedings_, 1872, p. 327), ``whether the moral classification of prisoners ought to be the main foundation of penitentiary systems, either in association or on the cellular plan,'' which he himself decided in the affirmative, was not so much as discussed, and it was not even referred to at the <p 226>successive Congresses at Stockholm (1878), Rome (1885), and St. Petersburg (1889). On the contrary, the Congress at Stockholm decided that, ``reserving minor and special punishments for certain slight infractions of the law, or for such as do not point to the corrupt nature of their authors, it is desirable to adopt for every prison system the greatest possible legal assimilation of punishments by imprisonment, with no difference except in their duration, and the consequences following upon release.''[20] [20] _Proceedings__, i. 138-70, 551-7, 561-3. Now and then, however, a prison expert of more positive tendencies maintains ``the very great use, or rather the scientific necessity, of the classification of prisoners as a basis for the punitive and prison system'' (Beltrani Scalia.) To positivists, the ``uniformity of punishment,'' even of mere detention, appears simply absurd, since it ignores the capital fact of different categories of criminals. There must be homogeneity between the evil and its remedy; for, as Dumesnil says, ``the prisoner is a moral (I would add a physical) patient, more or less curable, and we must apply to him the great principles of the art of medicine. To a diversity of ills we must apply a diversity of remedies.''