In this connection, deeds that lead to cruelty and murder often involve forms of epilepsy. It ought therefore always to be a practice to consult a physician concerning the accused, for cruelty, lust, and psychic disorders are often enough closely related. About this matter Lombroso is famous for the wealth of material he presents.
The question of home-sickness is of essential significance and must not be undervalued. It has been much studied and the notion has been reached that children mainly (in particular during the period of puberty), and idiotic and weak persons, suffer much from home-sickness, and try to combat the oppressive feeling of dejection with powerful sense stimuli. Hence they are easily led to crime, especially to arson. It is asserted that uneducated people in lonesome, very isolated regions, such as mountain tops, great moors, coast country, are particularly subject to nostalgia. This seems to be true and is explained by the fact that educated people easily find diversion from their sad thoughts and in some degree take a piece of home with them in their more or less international culture. In the same way it is conceivable that inhabitants of a region not particularly individualized do not so easily notice differences. Especially he who passes from one city to another readily finds himself, but mountain and plain contain so much that is contrary that the feeling of strangeness is overmastering. So then, if the home-sick person is able, he tries to destroy his nostalgia through the noisiest and most exciting pleasures; if he is not, he sets fire to a house or in case of need, kills somebody--in short what he needs is explosive relief. Such events are so numerous that they ought to have considerable attention. Nostalgia should be kept in mind where no proper motive for violence is to be found and where the suspect is a person with the above-mentioned qualities. Then again, if one discovers that the suspect is really suffering from home-sickness, from great home-sickness for his local relations, one has a point from which the criminal may be reached. As a rule such very pitiful individuals are so less likely to deny their crime in the degree in which they feel unhappy that their sorrow is not perceivably increased through arrest. Besides that, the legal procedure to which they are subjected is a not undesired, new and powerful stimulus to them.