In the second part, mental alienation in relation to legal medicine, the author examines the anthropological and psychic characters of lunacy, which he divides into various classes: congenital mental alienation (cretinism, idiocy, imbecility, eccentricity); acquired mental alienation (mania, melancholia, paranoia, circular insanity, dementia); mental alienation in conjunction with neurosis (epilepsy, hysteria, progressive general paralysis); alienation resulting from toxic influences (alcoholism, including forms produced by indulgence in absinthe and coca, saturnine encephalopathy, pellagra). An investigation is made into the etiology of these various forms with special reference to their juridical importance.
The third part is devoted exclusively to medico-legal questions, to an examination of the various forms of violent death: by heat, electricity, starvation, hanging, strangulation, asphyxia, and poisoning, the symptoms which distinguish each type being carefully defined. This is followed by a study on wounds produced by firearms, pointed weapons or blades, on living and dead bodies, in order to determine the exact situation of the wound and the manner in which it has been inflicted. Finally, we have an examination of the different forms of poisoning.
A separate lecture treats of sexual psychopathy and offences against morality; and other lectures discuss questions of legal obstetrics: abortion, infanticide, and matrimonial questions.
XI
Recent Discoveries in Psychiatry and Criminal Anthropology and the Practical Application of these Sciences
This volume was published in 1893. It contains a complete summary of the latest research of criminologists in jurisprudence, psychiatry, and anthropology, during the interval between the publication of the fifth and that of the last edition of Prof. Lombroso's Criminal Man.
The research includes anthropological discoveries in the skull, skeleton, internal organs, and brains of criminals, as well as others of a biological and functional nature. They are followed by a study of the methods to be employed for the cure and punishment of crime.