The criminal, his personnel and environment : a scientific study / by August Drähms ; with an introduction by Cesare Lombroso.

  • Dr̃hms August, 1849-
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The criminal, his personnel and environment : a scientific study / by August Drähms ; with an introduction by Cesare Lombroso. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    PREFACE These pages present in modest pretension the sum- mary of several years’ study and practical contact with a subject hitherto lightly esteemed, and less understood (save by the few), and yet of more than passing im- portance. I have sought to examine the same in its twofold phases: in its purely personal aspect, and as a social phenomenon. Since the proper study of mankind is man, it follows that equal importance attaches to that morbid or vari- ational form in respect of which he differs morally and sociologically from his fellows. This circumscribes the scope and limit of practical criminology. Physical and moral soundness excites no criticism and creates little interest, it being the normal condition of man. Departure therefrom arouses attention in proportion to its seriousness, and lays open a wide field of speculative inquiry in the direction of cause and cure, as exploited by theorist and experimentalist. This constitutes the ground of criminological science, if such it may be termed. Crime is largely a social disease. Its personnel is the bacilli that infect the collective organism. As such, it is clearly not an accident, nor a misfortune, nor yet an