With a humanized prison system many of these men might be lifted up, but alas! when they come into the hands of any society or individual who purposes helping them, not only has their crime and its consequences to be considered, but the work of the prison has to be undone before success can be achieved. To undo this in some cases is, I believe, an impossible task; the stain has become part and parcel of themselves, and though they may have good instincts, intentions, and desires, they cannot carry them out, for the dead hand of the prison is upon them, and to crime they go with automatic certainty. But I have given instances of criminals that possess a mania for one particular kind of crime only, and who rarely, if ever, commit any other. Such are by no means few in number, but how to deal with them is beyond my comprehension, for though it is possible to trace their crime to its cause, it is impossible for me to say how that cause can be removed. One thing, however, I do feel sure about, and it is this, that the present method of dealing with them while in prison intensifies the proclivity. Medical and scientific men ought to succeed where I fail; they can go deeper down into the wonders of the human body and mind. I can but pity such criminals, and in my blind way try to help here and there one of them. But to the Faculty I point out the undoubted fact that otherwise decent and estimable men and women have a mania for a particular sort of crime, and that at intervals an almost irresistible impulse towards its commission comes upon them.
Probably this is not a new discovery; others beside myself must have noticed it. They may have noticed it, but very few can have had the same opportunities as myself of seeing the reality and force of this mania, and possibly no one has ever racked their brains or searched their mind as I have in the vain endeavour to find some method of saving these people from themselves, and of helping them in the strenuous but fruitless battle that many of them fight. To the Faculty I point it out, and to the Faculty I look for help. Shall I look in vain? Are we to be for ever impotent before diseases of the mind? I hope not, and I believe it will not always be so. The wondrous and varied organisms of the human body are now made visible to us, its diseases are traced and located, treated and often cured. But the abyss of the human mind is still unexplored, its diseases are still unclassified, and its peculiarities but little noticed.