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LOMBROSO, CESARE (1836-1909)

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Originally appearing in Volume V16, Page 936 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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LOMBROSO, CESARE (1836-1909) , See also:Italian criminologist, was See also:born on the 18th of See also:November 1836 at See also:Verona, of a Jewish See also:family. He studied at See also:Padua, See also:Vienna and See also:Paris, and was in 1862 appointed See also:professor of psychiatry at See also:Pavia, then director of the lunatic See also:asylum at See also:Pesaro, and later professor of forensic See also:medicine and of psychiatry at See also:Turin, where he eventually filled the See also:chair of criminal See also:anthropology. His See also:works, several of which have been translated into See also:English, include L' Uomo delinquente (1889); L'Uomo di genio (1888) Genio e follia (1877) and La Donna delinquente (1893). In 1872 he had made the notable See also:discovery that the disorder known as See also:pellagra was due (but see PELLAGRA) to a See also:poison contained in diseased See also:maize, eaten by the peasants, and he returned to this subject in La Pellagra in Italia (1885) and other works. Lombroso, like Giovanni Bovio (b. 1841), Enrico See also:Ferri (b. 1856) and Colajanni, well-known Italian criminologists, and his sons-in-See also:law G. Ferrero and See also:Carrara, was strongly influenced by Auguste See also:Comte, and owed to him an exaggerated tendency to refer all See also:mental facts to biological causes. In spite of this, however, and a serious want of accuracy and discrimination in handling See also:evidence, his See also:work made an See also:epoch in See also:criminology; for he surpassed all his predecessors by the wide See also:scope and systematic See also:character of his researches, and by the See also:practical conclusions he See also:drew from them. Their See also:net theoretical results is that the criminal See also:population exhibits a higher percentage of See also:physical, See also:nervous and mental anomalies than non-criminals; and that these anomalies are due partly to degeneration, partly to See also:atavism. The criminal is a See also:special type of the human See also:race, See also:standing midway between the lunatic and the See also:savage. This See also:doctrine of a " criminal type "has been gravely criticized, but is admitted by all to contain a substratum of truth.

The practical reform to which it points is a See also:

classification of offenders, so that the born criminal may receive a different See also:kind of See also:punishment from the offender who is tempted into See also:crime by circumstances (see also CRIMINOLOGY). Lombroso's biological principles are much less successful in his work on See also:Genius, which he explains as a morbid, degenerative See also:condition, presenting analogies to See also:insanity, and not altogether See also:alien to crime. In 1899 he published in See also:French a See also:book which gives a resume of much of his earlier work, entitled Le Crime, causes et remedes. Later works are: Delitti vecchi e delitti nuovi (Turin, 1902); Nuovi studi sul genio (2 vols., See also:Palermo, 1902) ; and in 1908 a work on See also:spiritualism (Eng. trans., After See also:Death—What? 1909), to which subject he had turned his See also:attention during the later years of his See also:life. He died suddenly from a See also:heart complaint at Turin on the 19th of See also:October 1909. See Kurella, Cesare Lombroso and See also:die Naturgeschichte See also:des Verbrechers (See also:Hamburg, r892); and a See also:biography, with an See also:analysis of his works, and a See also:short See also:account of their See also:general conclusions by his daughters, Paola Carrara and Gina Ferrero, written in 1906 on the occasion of the See also:sixth See also:congress of criminal anthropology at Turin.

End of Article: LOMBROSO, CESARE (1836-1909)

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