[42]
UNDER 25 YEARS. BETWEEN 25 AND 50 YEARS.
NORMAL. CRIMINAL. NORMAL. CRIMINAL.
LOCATION. p. 100. p. 100. p. 100. p. 100.
Wrinkles of the forehead 7·1 34 62 86
Nasolabial wrinkles 22 69 62 78
Zygomatic wrinkles 0 16 18 33
In criminal women (80) also, wrinkles have been found more frequent than in normal women, although here the difference is not so marked. One calls to mind at once the wrinkle of the sorcerers. It is enough to look at the bust of the celebrated Sicilian woman poisoner, preserved in the National Museum of Palermo, and whose face is one heap of wrinkles.
Dr. Ottolenghi, studying with me the frequency of canities (turning grey) and baldness in people, has demonstrated either absence or lateness of the same among criminals,[43] as also among epileptics and among cretins. Among the first, swindlers only tend to approach more the normal type.[44] On the other hand, among 280 criminal women canities was found more frequently, and baldness less frequently, than in the case of 200 honest workingmen.
[43] La Calvizie, la Canizie e le Rughe nei normali,
nei criminali negli epiletis e nei cretini. Archiv. di
Psichiatria, 1889, x.
[44]
CLASSES. WITH CANITIES. WITH BALDNESS.
p. 100. p. 100.
400 Normal people 62·5 19
80 Epileptics 31·5 12·7
40 Cretins 11·7 13·5
490 Criminals 25·9 48
Thieves 24·4 2·6
Swindlers 47 13·1
Maimers 23·7 5·3
80 Criminal women 45 9·7
200 Honest women 60 13
We shall not terminate this part of our discussion without making mention of the beautiful discovery that we owe—it pleases us to state—to a lawyer, Mr. Anfosso. The tachyanthropometer which he has constructed is a real automatic measurer. (Archiv. di Psych., Art. IX. p. 173.) We might name it,—if the word did not possess a little too much local color,—an anthropometric guillotine; so quickly and with the precision of a machine, does it give the most important measurements of the body, which makes the practice of anthropometry very easy, even to people who are entire strangers to the science; and it facilitates, moreover, the examination of the description of individual criminals, the perfection of which will always remain one of the most glorious distinctions of M. Bertillon. And at the same time that this instrument renders services to the administration of justice, it permits on a grand scale observations which hitherto were only obtainable by the learned.
Experiments were made a short time ago by Mr. Rossi, who studied the result of these measurements in 100 criminals (nearly all thieves). He found the breadth of the span of the arms to be greater than the height of body in 88; and in 11 to be less. In 30 he found the right foot larger; in 58 he found the left foot larger; in 12 both feet equal. The right arms of 43 per cent. were longer than the left, and the left in 54 per cent. longer than the right. Which confirms to a marvellous degree the gaucherie, mancinism, or structural misproportion, that had before been indicated by dynamometry and the study of the walk of criminals.[45]
[45] Archiv. di Psichiatria, 1889, Vol. x. p. 191.