asylum at Pesaro, he reformed it, and established a journal, written and
managed by the insane. He then returned to Pavia, where he continued his
psychiatric work, investigated the influence of atmospheric conditions on
the mind, invented an instrument to measure pain, and engaged in a great
number of studies, marked by extraordinary ingenuity, patience, and
insight. Even as a youth Lombroso possessed the art of divining fruitful
ideas, which at the time appeared absurd to scientific men as well as to
the public. Every line of investigation he took up was at the time
apparently opposed to the tendency of thought, and only received general
attention at a later date. This was true, to some extent, even of the
great achievement of his life.
In the year 1859--perhaps the most memorable of the century--Broca, who
had a decided influence on Lombroso, had inaugurated the naturalist method
of treating man with the Anthropological Society of Paris. The
illuminating genius of Virchow, and his prodigious energy, which has done
so much for anthropology and the methods of anthropology, also had its
influence on the Italian, in some respects a kindred spirit. And Darwin’s
_Origin of Species_, published in 1859, supplied, for the first time, an
indispensable biological basis, and furnished that atavistic key of which
Lombroso was tempted to make at first so much use, sometimes, it must be
added, so much abuse. These circumstances combined to render possible, for
the first time, the complete scientific treatment of the criminal man as a
human variety, while Lombroso’s own manifold studies and various faculties
had given him the best preparation for approaching this great task. It was
in 1859 that he first conceived this task; _L’Uomo Delinquente_ was not,
however, finally published until 1876, while the second volume only
appeared in 1889.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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