condemned to death for homicide--A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie’s investigation of the subject--Racine’s satire on such prosecutions in _Les Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat the law of the primitive man and the savage--The application of this iron rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit pig not to be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects--Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell sentenced to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection--Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment prescribed for mad dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of talion and decrees of corruption of blood--Examples in ancient and modern legislation--Cicero approves of such penalties for political offences--Survival of this conception of justice in theology--Constitutio Criminalis Carolina--Lombroso opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism--Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in English law--Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland--Blackstone’s theory of it untenable--Penalties inflicted for suicide--Ancient legislation on this subject--Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in England _p._ 18 CHAPTER II MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence-- Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured little children “even on Friday”--Pope Stephen VI. brings the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--“Blue Laws” a great advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull-- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense-- Theories of the origin and nature of crime--Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the encephalon-- Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--Difficulty of defining