Cesare Lombroso

Lombroso was born in Verona, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, on 6 November 1835 to a wealthy Jewish family. His father was Aronne Lombroso, a tradesman from Verona, and his mother was Zeffora (or Zefira) Levi from Chieri near Turin. Cesare Lombroso descended from a line of rabbis, which led him to study a wide range of topics in university. He studied literature, linguistics, and archaeology at the universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris. Despite pursuing these studies in university, Lombroso eventually settled on pursuing a degree in medicine, which he graduated with from the University of Pavia. ==Career==

Lombroso initially worked as an army surgeon, beginning in 1859 when he enlisted as a volunteer. He claimed that he developed the theory of atavistic criminality during this period. In 1866, he was appointed visiting lecturer at Pavia, and later took charge of the insane asylum at Pesaro in 1871. His research into the bodily characteristics of soldiers and asylum inmates became the foundation of his work on criminal anthropology. He became professor of forensic medicine and hygiene at Turin in 1878. That year he wrote his most important and influential work, ''L'uomo delinquente (Criminal Man'' in English), which went through five editions in Italian and was published in various European languages. Three of his works had been translated into English by 1900, including a partial translation of The Female Offender published in 1895 and read in August of that year by the late nineteenth-century English novelist George Gissing (1857–1903). Lombroso became a professor of psychiatry (1896) and of criminal anthropology (1906) at Turin University. ==Personal life and final years==

Lombroso married Nina de Benedetti on 10 April 1870. They had five children together, one of whom—Gina—would go on to publish a summary of Lombroso's work after his death. He died in Turin in 1909. == Concept of criminal atavism ==

Lombroso's general theory suggested that criminals are distinguished from noncriminals by multiple physical anomalies. He postulated that criminals represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early humans and to some extent preserved, he said, in modern "savages". The behaviour of these biological "throwbacks" will inevitably be contrary to the rules and expectations of modern civilized society. Through years of postmortem examinations and anthropometric studies of criminals, the insane, and normal individuals, Lombroso became convinced that the "born criminal" (reo nato, a term given by Ferri) could be anatomically identified by such items as a sloping forehead, ears of unusual size, asymmetry of the face, prognathism, excessive length of arms, asymmetry of the cranium, and other "physical stigmata". Specific criminals, such as thieves, rapists, and murderers, could be distinguished by specific characteristics, he believed. Lombroso also maintained that criminals had less sensitivity to pain and touch; more acute sight; a lack of moral sense, including an absence of remorse; more vanity, impulsiveness, vindictiveness, and cruelty; and other manifestations, such as a special criminal argot and the excessive use of tattooing. For Lombroso, the "born criminal" character was embodied by Vittorio Pini (1859–1903), a famous Italian anarchist who engaged in a series of sensationalist robberies and was one of the founders of illegalism. He chose him to be the archetype of that idea he was developing. Besides the "born criminal", Lombroso also described "criminaloids", or occasional criminals, criminals by passion, moral imbeciles, and criminal epileptics. He recognized the diminished role of organic factors in many habitual offenders and referred to the delicate balance between predisposing factors (organic, genetic) and precipitating factors such as one's environment, opportunity, or poverty. In Criminal Woman, as introduced in an English translation by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson, Lombroso used his theory of atavism to explain women's criminal offending. In the text, Lombroso outlines a comparative analysis of "normal women" as opposed to "criminal women" such as "the prostitute." However, Lombroso's "obdurate beliefs" about women presented an "intractable problem" for this theory: "Because he was convinced that women are inferior to men Lombroso was unable to argue, based on his theory of the born criminal, that women's lesser involvement in crime reflected their comparatively lower levels of atavism." Lombroso's research methods were clinical and descriptive, with precise details of skull dimensions and other measurements. He did not engage in rigorous statistical comparisons of criminals and non-criminals. Although he gave some recognition in his later years to psychological and sociological factors in the etiology of crime, he remained convinced of and identified with, criminal anthropometry. After he died, his skull and brain were measured according to his own theories by a colleague as he requested in his will; his head was preserved in a jar and is still displayed with his collection at the Museum of Psychiatry and Criminology in Turin. Lombroso's theories were disapproved throughout Europe, especially in schools of medicine: notably by Alexandre Lacassagne in France. His notions of physical differentiation between criminals and non-criminals were seriously challenged by Charles Goring (The English Convict, 1913), who made elaborate comparisons and found insignificant statistical differences. == Legacy ==

Self-proclaimed the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, Lombroso is purported to have coined the term criminology. He institutionalized the science of psychiatry in universities. His graduating thesis from the University of Pavia dealt with "endemic cretinism". Through his various publications, Lombroso established a school of psychiatry based on biological determinism and the idea that mental illness was via genetic factors. A person's predisposition to mental illness was determinable through his appearance, as explained in the aforementioned criminal atavism segment. Lombroso's theory has been cited as possibly "the most influential doctrine" in all areas studying human behaviour, and indeed, its impact extended far and wide. In particular, Lombroso began searching for a relationship between tattoos and an agglomeration of symptoms eut (which are currently diagnosed as borderline personality disorder). His work stereotyping degenerates can even be seen as an influence behind Benito Mussolini's movement to clean the streets of Italy. In addition to influencing criminal atavism, Lombroso wrote a book called Genio e Follia, in which he discussed the link between genius and insanity. He believed that genius was an evolutionarily beneficial form of insanity, stemming from the same root as other mental illnesses. This hypothesis led to his request to examine Leo Tolstoy for degenerate qualities during his attendance at the 12th International Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897. The meeting went poorly, and Tolstoy's novel Resurrection shows great disdain for Lombroso's methodology. Towards the end of his life, Lombroso began to study pellagra, a disease which Joseph Goldberger simultaneously was researching, in rural Italy. He postulated that pellagra came from a nutrition deficit, officially proven by Goldberger. This disease also found its roots in the same poverty that caused cretinism, which Lombroso studied at the start of his medical career. Furthermore, before Lombroso's death, the Italian government passed a law in 1904 standardizing treatment in mental asylums and codifying procedural admittance for mentally ill criminals. This law gave psychiatrists free rein within the criminally insane asylum, validating the field of psychiatry by giving the psychiatrists the sole authority to define and treat the causes of criminal behaviour (a position which Lombroso argued for from his early teaching days to his death). == The Man of Genius ==

Lombroso believed that genius was closely related to madness. In his attempts to develop these notions, while in Moscow in 1897 he travelled to Yasnaya Polyana to meet Leo Tolstoy in hopes of elucidating and providing evidence for his theory of genius reverting or degenerating into insanity. In his exploration of geniuses descending into madness, Lombroso stated that he could only find six men who did not exhibit symptoms of "degeneration" or madness: Galileo, Da Vinci, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Darwin. In commenting on skull measurements, Lombroso made observations such as, "I have noted several characters which anthropologists consider to belong to the lower races, such as prominence of the styloid apophysis". This observation was recorded in response to his analysis of Alessandro Volta's skull. Lombroso listed the following geniuses, among others, as "sickly and weak during childhood": Demosthenes, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Adam Smith, Robert Boyle, Alexander Pope, John Flaxman, Nelson, Albrecht von Haller, Körner and Blaise Pascal. Lombroso's work was also criticized by Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi, who, in his review of Lombroso's The Man of Genius—and specifically his classifications and definitions of "the genius"—stated, "By creating a genius according to his own fancy, an ideal and abstract being, and not by examining the personality of a real living genius, he naturally arrives at the conclusion that all theories by which the origin of genius is sought to be explained on a basis of observation, and especially that particular one which finds in degeneration the cause or one of the causes of genius, are erroneous." Sergi went on to state that such theorists are "like the worshippers of the saints or of fetishes, who do not recognize the material from which the fetish is made, or the human origin from which the saint has sprung". == Spiritualism ==

Later in his life Lombroso began investigating mediumship. Although originally sceptical, he later became a believer in spiritualism. As an atheist Lombroso discusses his views on the paranormal and spiritualism in his book After Death – What? (1909) which he believed the existence of spirits and claimed the medium Eusapia Palladino was genuine. The article "Exit Eusapia!" was published in the British Medical Journal on 9 November 1895. The article questioned the scientific legitimacy of the Society for Psychical Research for investigating Palladino a medium who had a reputation of being a fraud and imposter and was surprised that Lombroso had been deceived by Palladino. The anthropologist Edward Clodd wrote "[Lombroso] swallowed the lot at a gulp, from table raps to materialisation of the departed, spirit photographs and spirit voices; every story, old or new, alike from savage and civilised sources, confirming his will to believe". Lombroso's daughter Gina Ferrero wrote that during the later years of his life, Lombroso suffered from arteriosclerosis and his mental and physical health was wrecked. The sceptic Joseph McCabe wrote that because of this it was not surprising that Palladino managed to fool Lombroso into believing spiritualism by her tricks. == Literary impact ==

Historian Daniel Pick argues that Lombroso serves "as a curious footnote to late-nineteenth-century literary studies", due to his referencing in famous books of the time. Jacques in Émile Zola's The Beast Within is described as having a jaw that juts forward on the bottom. It is emphasized especially at the end of the book when he is overwhelmed by the desire to kill. The anarchist Karl Yundt in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, delivers a speech denouncing Lombroso. The assistant prosecutor in Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection uses Lombroso's theories to accuse Maslova of being a congenital criminal, and in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Count Dracula is described as having a physical appearance Lombroso would describe as criminal. In Ian Fleming's 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker, Bond mockingly describes the villainous, facially scarred Hugo Drax as a man with whom Lombroso would have been delighted. == Works ==

Original Italian • 1859  Ricerche sul cretinismo in Lombardia • 1864  Genio e follia • 1865  Studi clinici sulle mallatie mentali • 1871  ''L'uomo bianco e l'uomo di colore'' • 1873  Sulla microcefala e sul cretinismo con applicazione alla medicina legale • 1876  ''L'uomo delinquente'' • 1879  Considerazioni al processo Passannante • 1881  ''L'amore nel suicidio e nel delitto'' • 1888  ''L'uomo di genio in rapporto alla psichiatria'' • 1890  Sulla medicina legale del cadavere (second edition) • 1891  Palimsesti del carcere • 1892  Trattato della pellagra • 1893  La Donna Delinquente: La prostituta e la donna normale (Co-authored with Lombroso's son-in-law Guglielmo Ferrero). • 1894  Le più recenti scoperte ed applicazioni della psichiatria ed antropologia criminale • 1894  Gli anarchici • 1894  ''L'antisemitismo e le scienze moderne'' • 1897  Genio e degenerazione • 1898  Les Conquêtes récentes de la psychiatrie • 1899  Le crime; causes et remédes • 1900  Lezioni de medicina legale • 1902  Delitti vecchi e delitti nuovi • 1909  Ricerche sui fenomeni ipnotici e spiritici In 1906, a collection of papers on Lombroso was published in Turin as ''L'opera di Cesare Lombroso nella scienza e nelle sue applicazioni''. English translations • 1891 The Man of Genius, Walter Scott. • 1895 The Female Offender. The 1895 English translation was a partial translation which left out the entire section on the normal woman and which, in true Victorian fashion, sanitised Lombroso's language. • 1899 Crime: Its Causes and Remedies • 1909 After Death - What? • 1911 Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • 2004 The Criminal Anthropological Writings of Cesare Lombroso • 2004 Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman. Translated by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson. • 2006 Criminal Man. Translated by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson. Selected articles • "Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology", The Monist, Vol. I, No. 2, 1890. • "The Physiognomy of the Anarchists", The Monist, Vol. I, No. 3, 1890. • "Innovation and Inertia in the World of Psychology", The Monist, Vol. I, No. 3, 1890. • "The Modern Literature of Italy Since the Year 1870", The Monist, Vol. I, No. 3, 1890. • "Criminal Anthropology Applied to Pedagogy", The Monist, Vol. VI, No. 1, October 1895. • "The Heredity of Acquired Characteristics," The Forum, Vol. XXIV, 1898. • "Was Columbus Morally Irresponsible?," The Forum, Vol. XXVII, 1899. • "Why Criminals of Genius Have No Type," The International Quarterly, Vol. VI, 1902. Introductions • MacDonald, Arthur. Criminology, Introduction by Cesare Lombroso, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1893. • Drahms, August. The Criminal, Introduction by Cesare Lombroso, The Macmillan Company, 1900. • == References ==