_Cases._ During many years of observation, my father was able to follow innumerable cases of moral insanity in which perversity was manifested literally from the cradle, and in which the victims of this disease grew up into delinquents in no wise distinguishable from born criminals.
A typical instance is that of a certain Rizz... who was brought to him by the mother because, while still at the breast, he bit his nurse so viciously that bottle-feeding had to be substituted. At the age of two years, careful training and medical treatment notwithstanding, this child was separated from his brothers, because he stuck pins into their pillows and played dangerous tricks on them. Two years later, he broke open his father's cash-box and stole money to buy sweets; at six, although decidedly intelligent, he was expelled from every private school in the town, because he instigated the others to mischief or ill-treated them. At fourteen, he seduced a servant and ran away, and at twenty he killed his fiancée by throwing her out of a window. Thanks to the testimony of a great many doctors, Rizz... was declared to be morally insane, but if the family had been poor instead of well-to-do, and the mother had neglected to have her child examined in infancy by a medical man, thus obtaining ample proof of the pathological nature of his perversity, Rizz... would have been condemned as an ordinary criminal, because, like all morally insane persons, he was very intelligent and able to reason clearly, like a normal individual.
Another typical case is that of a child named Rav... (see Fig. 12) a native of the Romagna, who was brought to my father at the age of eight, because his parents were convinced that his conduct was due to a morbid condition. Unlike the above-mentioned case, his evil acts were always carried out in an underhand way. He showed great spite towards his brothers and sisters, especially the smaller ones, whom he attempted to strangle on several occasions, and was expelled from school on account of the bad influence he exercised over his schoolfellows. He delighted above everything in robbing his parents, employers, and the neighbours and in falsely accusing others, and so cleverly did he manage this that he caused a great deal of mischief before his double-dealing was discovered. When only eight, on leaving home early every morning to go to work, he would secretly throw all the milk left at the neighbours' doors into the dust-bin, then he accused the janitor of stealing it and got him dismissed. A year later, he nearly succeeded in causing the arrest of a pawnbroker, whom he accused of having lent him money on a cloak, it being illegal in Italy to accept anything in pawn from a minor. The cloak, however, was discovered by his mother hidden in the cellar. At ten years of age, he alleged that his father had brutally ill-treated him, and as severe marks and bruises on his body gave colour to the accusation, the poor man was arrested. The marks, however, were self-inflicted.