New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-07-19


giOn.
This transtory popularity of certain horrible
oiYcnses can lie in part, but not wholly, ac-
counted for by mans wcll-lnOwn proneness 10
imitation. Every community is thichly sOwn
with the seeds of evil The germs OF violence
and lust, in all their protean shapes, are hid
den under the surface of society, and nothing
il wanting for their development but n con-
currcnce Of favorable external circumstances
an exceptional social disturbance unduly
rousing the passions and unsctting the balance
of the mind, an outbreak Of political or com
mercial excitement, anything in fact which
affects the normal condition Of mental health,
and favors the performance of appetite and
impulse over reason and Judgment Then The
instinct of imitation comes into play, and we
see the result in an appalling series of
adulteries, pOsening8. shootngs, child-murders,
forgeries, or suicides. Perhaps we may go
further yet. Strictly speaking, every criminal
is insane, and it is possible that moral
disorders are in part explainablc not
only by The same method Of reasoning
which we apply to the investigation of
bodily diseases, but by the same physical
causes whereby those diseases are produced.
Bodily disease, mental disease, and criminal
prOpGnstics are cOrrolaiiyes, interchangeable
with one another, "a heat may be changed
into ecricity, electricity into chemical action,
chemical action into magnetism, and so on
with all the impondcrable forces, either be-
ing cxchlngcable for any Of the others The
morbid organization which shows itself in one
generation by epilepsy or consumption may
be inherited in the next 10 chronic alcohol
ism, in the next as physical dcfOrmty, or hy
poChOndrasis, or moral deprayity, or homicidal
maria. Who shall say then that the external
influences which induce a dsordcrcd action of
the system and arrest the natural development
of the body are not capable OF faYOring both
endemic and epidemic manifestations of in
sanity and crimel Ia other words, trace
murder back far enough and you may find its
origin in mias!aa. Stldy all the facts, and
you may discover that certain forms of vio-
lonce are endemic in Ireland, robbery in Italy,
infantieide in China. suicide iii India and ia
pan, because physical influences in those cOun-
tries induce peculiar morbid changes in the
nervous centers; and that poisoning once
ragged in Italy and France, self-destructiOn in
Lyons, wtchcratt in both Europe and America,
because climatic, social, or other disturbances
facilitated the development of certain patho-
logical conditions.
OF course we do not imply that because
crime is a symptom Of mental disease, a GRIM
inal is therefore Irresponsible The precise
degree of disorder which destroys free-will is
an inquiry which often battles the best ex-
pers; but there lies on each side of the di-
vidng line a wide region of disease in which
it will not be difficult to decide the patients
accountability. Hrs. Sherman may have been
inpelled to poison three husbands and eight
children, and Mrs. Wharton to kill half
dozen people with tartar-emetic, in cOnse-
quence of some hereditary defect OF Organiza-
ton, developed by physical and wholly ex-
traneOus causes, just as latent fever-and-ague
may be developed by a change of climate
and yet both women may be responsible for
their actions in the sight of God and in the
eye of the law. Ruloif was justly hanged; but
nobody believes shat lie had a really healthy
mind, notwithstanding that the physicians
pronounced him "peffectly sane.n He was
sane in legal sense, but not in pathological
sense. So if the two women now under arrest
for wholesale poisoning prove to be guilty, it
viii not follow that they have not deserved
tho full penalty of the law, because common
sense requires us to look upon such extraor-
binary series Of murders as the manifestations
Of horribly dis0rdered brains.