L... a morally insane subject, age 16, native of Turin, the son of an aged, but extremely respectable man. Height 1.50 m., weight, 46.2 kg., with abundant hair, and down on the forehead, incisors crowded together, excessive development of the canines, and exaggerated orbital angle of the frontal bone. He was entirely devoid of affection for his family, remarking cynically that he was fond of his father when he gave him money and did not worry him. Sometimes he kicked the poor old man and otherwise abused him. When unable to obtain money, he would smash all the furniture in the house, until, for the sake of economy, his family gave him what he wanted. In order to get a five-pound note from money-lenders he would sign promissory notes for ten times that amount. He changed his ideas from one hour to another. Sometimes he wanted to enter the army, at others to emigrate to France, etc. When only fourteen he frequented houses of ill-fame, where he played the bully.
Although this case may be regarded as a typical instance of moral insanity, there were apparently no symptoms of vertigo or convulsions. At the age of sixteen, however, while suffering from rheumatism, this subject tried to throw himself from the balcony of his bedroom at the same hour three nights running. After this he seems to have suffered from amnesia.
These frenzied attempts at self-destruction, which seem to have taken the place of the epileptic seizure, were related to my father casually by the boy's mother; but in other cases, similar incidents, although of the utmost importance to the criminologist, often pass unnoticed.
In the _Actes du Congrès d'Anthropologie_, Angelucci describes another typical case of epileptic moral insanity. E. G. (brother a criminal epileptic, father a sufferer from cancer) was sentenced several times for assaulting people often without motive. Tattooed with the figure of a naked woman, microcephalous (39.2 cubic inches = 589 c.c.), having cranial and facial asymmetry, he was vain, deceitful, and violent, and made great show of scepticism although he wore a great many medals of the Virgin. This subject was over twenty-five when the first epileptic seizure took place.
The connection between epilepsy and crime is one of derivation rather than identity. Epilepsy represents the genus of which criminality and moral insanity are the species.
