Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-03
BY THOMAS R. HENRY.


scientific study Of murder is I'M
der way at st. Elizabeth's Hospital.
DR.. BENJAMIN Karpman Of the hos
| proximately $50 murderers, ranging
from harmless persons to human
monsters.
Now, he says, he is running short Of
material. He needs more murderers,
especially specimens which will At into
his type studies, and laments the waste
Of good material which goes to feed the
gallows and the dungeons of State
| prisons and asylumS.
| He needs this material, DR.. Karp-
man says. for mental vivisection. This
method alone. he believes, will uncover
the hidden sources of homicide.
Couch Is Vivisection Table.
But the Washington physician does
not propose to strap the living muir
derer on table and explore his insides
with knife. Quite to the contrary.
His vivisection is of the mind and the
subject usually co-operates. The vivi-
secting table is comfortable couch in
his ONCE. The knife is logical ANALYSIS
Of apparently illogical mental proc
esses.
The work at st. Elizabeth's DR.
Karpman points out, is practically a
pioneer effort to get at murder at its
source-the mentality of the nr-,~-
! derer himself. Other studies have becn
confined to the environment and train
| ing OF the slayer and defects in the
laws which, he holds, are only Incl
dental factors. The murderers them
selves have been waSted-treated either
with sickening sentimentality or harsh
vengeance. instead of being regarded
as scientific specimens.
For centuries, he points out, Grim
inals have been used In other scientific
work with good reSults-as when they
have been innoculated voluntarily with
certain diseases in order that the
processes of the infections might be
studied. Thus vaccination was first
tested on convicted murderers. But
dissection of the mind, he says, still
seems to have something of the same
sentiment against it as was displayed
against dissecting bodies by medical
students in the middle ages, which had
! to be overcome before there could be
any real advance in medicine. The
murderer himself, he points out usually
benefits enormously by this type Of
"vivisection," although this is Incl
| dental.
Fundamental Findings.
| Already, DIR. Karpman has made
1 oOAAAO A4AAAoAAACAAbdA 41AluLukS COIlCGTHlIlR
the differences in the inner life, or
thought processes, of persons who MUIR
| der and persons who, in apparently
| the same environment. do not murder
He is tracing these differences to their
sourceS-for murderer and good citizen
start life as the same sort of babies.
made OF the same material arranged
| in approximately the same way, and
develop into conscious human beings by
the same processes. Yet In the end one
VIII meet situation by murder which
70 the other causes Only passing ir-
r1tation. One will take keen delight
in watching suffering from which the
| other recoilS in horror. There has been
difference Somewhere--just where is
DR.. Karpman'S research problem,
His studies, DR.. Karpman points out,
have nothing to do with criminal legis-
latlon or law enforcement, as such. If
we can md the genesis of the murder
impulse in various characteristic types.
ne says, laws against homicide may be
wiped of the statute books because
there VIII be no murderers. society
development OF the psychiatric pattern
which eventuateS in murder before it
| gets underway.
But for this study, DR.. Karpman
| says 1t Is necessary to have murderers
plenty OF specimens in good condi-
tion. They are as essential as cadavers
to an anatomist or rocks to a geologist
Inc other day he was lamenting that
ne could not have q man who had Just
confessed nine poisonings perpetrated
for the pleasure he got out of watch
ing the victims die. The protection
| society would get from a mental vivi-
section OF this man, he said, might be
manifold what it could get by any other
| disposition of him.
Thus far DR.. Karpman's studies have
been confined largely to the criminal
| 1nsane-that is, persons found guilty
OF homicide who have been pronounced
mentally irresponsible by the courts
and committed to the Federal depart
ment for insane criminals at st. Eliza
beth's. This, he points out, Is both
an advantage and disadvantage. The
border line between the sane and the
insane, he says, is ill-def1ned but usual
veloped the characteristic mental
pathology of the murderer to such an
exaggerated degree that it becomes
obvious to jury. But, he holds, APP
proximately the same processes are at
work in producing the slayer who Is not
pronounced insane. It is q difference
Of degree rather than kind. Every
murderer Is abnormal.
American Environment Faulty.
The high homicide rate Of American
cities, in the opinion of DR.. Karpman,
merely means that there is something
in the American environment which
produces the type of mind pattern
favorable for murder, and the problem
Is the exceedingly complicated one of
finding this something" and tracing
the complicated path of the stimuli
that arise from 1t in the thought
processes of various types Of individuals.
And what is true for murder, he holds,
Is true for crime in general. It's genesis
is to be found in the exceedingly COM
plicated interaction of the individual
and his environment.
ITO accomplish this" said DR.. Karp-
man, 1.-THE relatively limited resources
of st. Elizabeths Hospital are obviously
| insufficient What is needed in this
country is a well endowed institute Of
| criminology, the function Of which shall
| be the making of intimate studies Of
| criminals. 1t is strange that the Amer
lean philanthropist. eager to ind OBJ
| jects for endowment, has neglected the
| study of the criminal. Yet the criminal
costs this country something like $10,-
900, 100000 and represents q most
serious social problem.
Murder" said DR.. Karpman, els q
| unique crime in the sense that it can