We have an examination of occasional, habitual, and latent criminals, who represent an attenuated type of delinquency, following on the investigations of these serious forms, admitting of correction, prevention, or cure. It develops much later in life than the vicious propensities of instinctive criminals or may even remain latent; yet at the root we always find the same anatomical and pathological anomalies, although less marked and fewer in number.
The origin of passionate and political criminals is entirely diverse. Their criminality springs from an excess of noble passions, the impetuosity of which prevents them from exercising sober judgment and urges them to unpremeditated actions that afterwards cause them the deepest remorse.
After a rapid survey of feminine criminality and its equivalent, prostitution, the author discusses juridical and social methods of curing crime.
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.