CRANIOSCOPY.
(Continued from [page 32.])
I would not say that Napoleon’s brain was to any great degree abnormal, but I am satisfied that criminal’s brains are generally abnormal, for there are many criminals whose heads do not, by their exterior form, indicate their depravity, but wherever I have examined the interior of the skull I have found the basilar organs active, growing and imprinted upon the interior table of the skull, while the superior region reveals the decline of the moral nature by the increased thickness of the bone which is growing inward and has not the digital impressions of the convolutions which are marked wherever the brain is in an active growing condition. The criminal’s skull must be studied by post mortem examination, and the most effective method is by placing a taper through the foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull which will reveal the more active organs by the translucency and thinness of the bones, while the inactive organs are indicated by their opacity and thickness, as in the following convict skull.
A REBELLIOUS CONVICT.
The sketch here presented exhibits the degrees of translucency and opacity in a skull which I obtained at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about fifty years ago. It was the skull of a convict killed in the penitentiary while leading a rebellion in a desperate effort to escape.
The man was of a respectable family, son of the sheriff of Warren County, Ky. He fell into bad company and bad habits at New Orleans, drinking and gaming, until for an act of highway robbery he was sent to the penitentiary. The reader will observe the general activity of the intellect and the adjacent social sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness, Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows intense activity which extends into Adhesiveness and cautiousness.
The translucency at Firmness, Irritability, and Combativeness, which were active to the last moments of his life, is quite characteristic. Upon the whole, the test by the inner light inserted at the foramen magnum in the base of the skull indicates a very low, lawless, desperate and unprincipled character, with enough of adhesiveness to give him comrades in crime, and enough of intelligence to give him some success.
The most extraordinary instance of this was in the skull of a negro woman which I examined in Alabama, which had only a slight translucency at Firmness, while the rest of the upper surface of the skull was so abnormally thick that in lifting it one was reminded of the weight of a block of wood. She had, in a fit of temper, murdered her own child in the field, chopping it down with an axe.