The sexual organs in women criminals very frequently reveal pathological
conditions. Undescended testis has been frequently found by one of the
medical officers who answered my Questions. Unusual size of penis by
another. It is interesting to note in this connection that Drs.
Bourneville and Sollier found exaggerated development of the glans penis
extremely common among the idiots at the Bicêtre, and that among 728
individuals examined they found no fewer than 262 presenting anomalies of
the sexual organs, an enormous proportion when compared with the ordinary
population.[29] Ottolenghi believes that “on the whole anomalies of the
genital organs have in sexual offenders no small diagnostic importance,
especially when united to other characters which distinguish them from the
honest and from criminals in general--as the greater frequency of fair
hair, of malformed ears, of bichromatism of the iris, of blue eyes, of
twisted noses, of facial asymmetry, of voluminous lower jaws, and of
various neuroses, especially epilepsy.”[30]
It may be noted here that Marro and Ottolenghi have recently studied
metabolism in criminals. The chief point that comes out is an augmented
elimination of phosphoric acid in the urine. The same has been observed in
chronic alcoholism. These researches will, no doubt, be continued.[31]
§ 6. _Heredity._
The detailed study of criminal heredity and of criminal habit, or
recidivism, scarcely forms part of criminal anthropology. It is an
important branch of criminal sociology. But the facts of heredity form
part of the evidence in favour of the reality of the criminal
anthropologist’s conclusions, and it is not possible to ignore them here
entirely. Moreover, the attitude of society towards the individual
criminal and his peculiarities must be to some extent determined by our
knowledge of criminal heredity.
The hereditary character of crime, and the organic penalties of natural
law, were recognised even in remote antiquity. They were involved in the
old Hebrew conception, which seems to have played a vital part in Hebrew
life, of a God who visited the sins of the parents upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation. We know also the story in Aristotle of
the man who, when his son dragged him by his hair to the door,
exclaimed--“Enough, enough, my son; I did not drag my father beyond this.”
And Plutarch puts the doctrine of heredity in a shape that is both ancient
and modern--“That which is engendered is made of the very substance of the
generating being, so that he bears in him something which is very justly
punished or recompensed for him, for this something is he.” Or
again--“There is between the generating being and the generated a sort of
hidden identity, capable of justly committing the second to all the
consequences of an action committed by the first.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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