Crime : its causes and remedies / by Cesare Lombroso ; translated by Henry P. Horton.

  • Lombroso, Cesare, 1835-1909.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Crime : its causes and remedies / by Cesare Lombroso ; translated by Henry P. Horton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Two centuries ago, while modem medical science was still young, medical practitioners proceeded upon two general assumptions: one as to the cause of disease, the other as to its treatment. As to the cause of disease, — disease was sent by the inscrutable will of God. No man could fathom that will, nor its arbitrary operation. As to the treatment of disease, there were believed to be a few remédiai agents of universal efficacy. Calomel and blood-letting, for example, were two of the principal ones. A larger or smaller dose of calomel, a greater or less quantity of bloodletting, — this blindly indiscriminate mode of treatment was regarded as orthodox for ail common varieties of ailment. And so his calomel pill and his bloodletting lancet were carried every- where with him by the doctor. Nowadays, ail this is past, in medical science. As to the causes of disease, we know that they are facts of nature, — various, but distinguishable by diagnosis and research, and more or less capable of prévention or control or counter- action. As to the treatment, we now know that there are various spécifie modes of treatment for spécifie eauses or symptoms, and that the treatment must be adapted to the cause. In short, the individualization of disease, in cause and in treatment, is the dominant truth of modem medical science. The same truth is now known about crime; but the under- standing and the application of it are just opening upon us. The old and still dominant thought is, as to cause, that a crime is caused by the inscrutable moral free will of the human being, doing or not doing the crime, just as it pleases; abso- lutely free in advance, at any moment of time, to choose or not to choose the criminal act, and therefore in itself the sole and ultimate cause of crime. As to treatment, there still are just two traditional measures, used in var^ing doses for ail kinds of crime and ail kinds of persons, — jail, or a fine (for death is now employed in rare cases only). But modem science, here as in medicine, recognizes that crime