nystagmus frequent; also spasmodic contractions on one side of the face,
by which the canine teeth are exposed. The forger and sharper, on the
other hand, has frequently a singular air of _bonhomie_, a kind of
clerical appearance, which is indeed necessary in his business, because it
inspires confidence. Some have angelic faces; others are small, pale, and
haggard. The poisoner also frequently has a peculiarly benevolent aspect.
“In general,” Lombroso concludes, “born criminals have projecting ears,
thick hair, a thin beard, projecting frontal eminences, enormous jaws, a
square and projecting chin, large cheek-bones, and frequent gesticulation.
It is, in short, a type resembling the Mongolian, or sometimes the
Negroid.”
It is very interesting to compare this concluding remark with some
observations made by Dr. Langdon Down, who has carefully studied and
endeavoured to classify the facial characteristics of idiots. Dr. Down
finds a resemblance between feeble-minded children and the various ethnic
types of the human family; he specially refers both to a Mongolian and a
Negroid type. Just as Professor Lombroso finds the Mongolian type most
common among his criminals, so Dr. Down finds it most common among his
idiots: “more than 10 per cent. of congenital feeble-minded children are
typical Mongols. Their resemblance is infinitely greater to one another
than to the members of their own families.” Their characteristics are very
marked: the hair is brownish (not black, as in the Mongol), straight, and
sparse, the face flat and broad, the cheeks rounded and widened laterally,
the eyes obliquely placed, and the fissure between the eyelids very
narrow, the forehead wrinkled transversely, the lips large and thick, the
nose small, the skin tawny. In Dr. Down’s Negroid type of idiot there are
characteristic cheek-bones, prominent eyes, puffy lips, retreating chins,
woolly but not black hair, and no pigmentation of skin. These points of
resemblance are of considerable interest if we are of opinion that the
instinctive criminal is best defined as a moral idiot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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