As between degeneration and disease, the proportion of anomalies caused by the former is considerably more than double. Hence, the great majority of malformations have their origin, so to speak, outside of the individual, the responsibility resting on the parents.
| Organs regard to which the anomalies occur | Anomalies | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Males | Females | |||||||
| Congenital | Pathological | Acquired through habit | Cause uncertain | Congenital | Pathological | Acquired through habit | Cause uncertain | |
| Head | 74 | 15 | 26 | 10 | ||||
| Periosteum | 1 | |||||||
| Hair | 26 | 2 | 1 | 17 | ||||
| Forehead | 15 | 25 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 1 | ||
| Face | 51 | 68 | 10 | 11 | 17 | 4 | ||
| Eyes | 15 | 6 | ||||||
| Ears | 221 | 88 | ||||||
| Teeth | 67 | 20 | 37 | 19 | 4 | 27 | ||
| Gums | 51 | 7 | 104 | 41 | 3 | 23 | ||
| Palate | 88 | 59 | 81 | 30 | 40 | 44 | ||
| Uvula | 14 | 112 | 6 | 54 | ||||
| Body (bust) | 5 | 54 | 72 | 2 | 3 | 18 | 9 | 1 |
| Limbs | 60 | 14 | 11 | 39 | 4 | 3 | ||
| Genital organs | 275 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Totals | 873 | 324 | 72 | 390 | 256 | 120 | 9 | 173 |
| Percentage | 40 | 10 | 4 | 18 | 45 | 21 | 1 | 30 |
The greatest number of anomalies due to degeneration occur in connection with the ear, and the genital organs, and next in order come those of the palate, the teeth and the limbs. The maximum number of anomalies due to pathological causes are in connection with the head, and principally with the face; after that, with the palate, and then with the bust.
The anomalies most difficult to diagnose seem to be those relating to the gums, the palate and the uvula, in regard to which it is not easy to determine whether they are due to degeneration or to disease.
In order that we may have a clear understanding regarding malformations, it is well to insist upon still another point: Malformation does not signify deviation from a type of ideal beauty, but from normality.
Now, there are normal forms which are very far from beautiful and which are associated with race. For instance, prognathism, ultra-dolichocephaly, a certain degree of flat-foot, prominent cheek-bones, the Mongolian eye, etc., are all of them characteristics which are regarded by us as the opposite of beautiful, but they are normal in certain races (therefore practical experience is indispensable). These principles which, when thus announced, are perfectly clear, must be extended far enough to include that sum total of individuals whom we are in the habit of calling our race. That we are hybrids, still showing more or less trace of the racial stocks which originally concurred in our formation, is well known, but not clearly enough. The primitive races are more or less evident in different centres of population; for instance, in the large and promiscuous cities, hybridism tends more or less completely, to mask the types of race, producing individual uniformity through an intermixture of characteristics that renders all the people very much alike (civilised races). These are the individuals who form the majority of the population, and whom we are in the habit of regarding as being normally formed. But when we get away from the big centres it may happen, and indeed does happen, that the primitive racial forms or types become more apparent; thus, for example, I found in Latium almost pure racial types at Castelli Romani (dolichocephalics, brunette type, short stature), and at Orte (brachycephalics, blond type, tall stature); the nuclei of population at Castelli were especially pure. Now, as a result of a highly particularised series of observations I found normal forms that were not beautiful in each of these races; thus, for example, in the brunette race, while the face is extremely beautiful and delicate, the hands are coarse, the feet show a tendency toward flat-foot, the breasts are pear-shaped, pendent and abundantly hairy; in the blond type, on the contrary, while the facial lineaments are coarse and quite imperfect, the hands, feet and breasts are marvellously beautiful.
Accordingly, the marks of beauty are distributed in nature among the different races; there is no race in existence that is wholly beautiful, just as there is no individual in existence who is perfect in all his parts.
Furthermore, since there is for every separate characteristic a long series of individual variations, both above and below (see chapters on Biometry and Statistical Methodology), it is very easy to assume that we are on the track of a malformation, when it is really a matter of racial characteristic. And this is all the more likely to constitute a source of error, because the school of Lombroso promulgated the morphological doctrine that a degenerate sometimes shows an exaggeration of ethnical characteristics.
Thus, for example, we meet with ultra-brachycephalics and ultra-dolichocephalics among the criminal classes.