There is a generally recognised tendency to the pointed (oxycephalic) or
sugar-loaf form of head. Though this form is probably, as Benedikt points
out, an effort at compensation, it is an effort that testifies to
defective organisation. The opposite defect of low or flat-roofed skull is
also found among criminals, and is characteristic of degeneration.
Lauvergne, in his old book on criminals, has a vivid and picturesque
sketch of a variety of this kind of head, which he called the satanic
type, and which he found among many of the worst criminals: “Such are the
heads which painters throw into their pictures, and call ‘heads of the
other world.’ I have recognised them in mediæval pictures, and in all the
museums in which the products of early art are preserved. You will see
them on old cathedrals, in which devils play a part, or wherever the
artist has received some diabolical inspiration, as in the Campo Santo at
Pisa. One cannot, indeed, better represent the genius of evil, Satan, the
fallen angel, than by giving him such a head.... Behind the frontal bones
the head seems to have been tied with a band to compress it around and to
force the swelling of the hemispheres upwards and backwards. It is the
head vulgarly called sugar-loaf. When it is complete, that is to say, when
it presents a prominent base supporting an inclined pyramid, more or less
truncated, this head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent
faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder,
and theft.” Benedikt regards the bilateral elevation of the sagittal
suture as, though rare, “significant of profound perversity of brain
function.” He also regards disproportionate development of the occipital
part of the skull as a characteristic mark of degeneration.[17] It
appears that the posterior half of the skull varies much more in different
individuals than the anterior half.
The orbital capacity has been noted by Lombroso and others to be
frequently larger than normal (as among birds of prey and some savages),
especially among thieves. There is marked exaggeration of the orbital
arches and frontal sinuses which may be related, at all events in the
cases of individuals living in the country, with energy of the respiratory
system.
Receding foreheads, very commonly observed among criminals, have always
been regarded as evidence of low mental and moral organisation, not
without reason, though it must be remembered, as Ten-Kate and Benedikt
point out, that the breadth, vaulting, and general size of the head must
be taken into consideration. Many men of marked intellectual power have
had receding foreheads.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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