are pointing out to law the uselessness of measuring blows with crime.

Law and crime have been confronting each other since man became a social being. The deterrent effect of law's punishment for crime, according to the best judgment of the students of criminal anthropology, is nil. As early as 1839, Matthew Davenport Hill, the philanthropic recorder of the English borough of Birmingham, stated, in commenting as a sequel to a charge to the grand jury, "I have often had occasion to remark how rare it is to find any person who has had experience of criminals to attach weight to deterrents." And later, in 1847, in a charge to the grand jury he uttered the following words: "The longer I sit on this bench the humbler grows my opinion of the efficacy of criminal jurisprudence, especially as regards its deterrent operation either on the offender himself who is visited with the penalties of the law, or on those exposed to temptation but who have not yet found their way into this dock. Thus, impressed, gentlemen, it will not surprise you that I am always looking round with a careful eye to find other means of diminishing the crime which prevails among us. These means range themselves under two heads, the prevention of crime and the reformation of the criminal." I quote these words of Recorder Hill to show that more than fifty years ago, when even the rational treatment of the insane was not an accomplished fact, there was an English judge, surrounded as he must have been at that time by the conservative prejudices of a profession whose respect for the common law almost amounted to idolatry, who was profoundly impressed with the wrong and insufficiency of law punishments, and whose ideas of reform were as broad and as humane as are those of the most advanced criminologists to-day. Recorder Hill well knew that he was not in harmony with the prevailing opinion of his time, for he writes in the sequel to his charge to the jury in 1845, after recommending some simpler laws, amusements, ragged schools, and suggestions for the prevention of crime instead of its punishment, as follows: "Years probably will elapse before these suggestions are held to be anything better than dreams. Be it so, but throwing them out is a step, though a short one, to their realization." It is not too much to say that the marked reformation in the trials and

judgments of crime dates from the year 1839, when Matthew Davenport Hill began his charges to the Birmingham grand jury, and I believe any student that reads his book, The Repression of Crime, will conclude that no one has done more to humanize the law toward crime than Recorder Hill, during the eighteen years when he was really the advance advocate of other means than severe and indiscriminating punishment for the treatment of crime. It is not necessary to quote the modern advocates of the curative treatment of crime, because we all know that the modern school of criminologists denounces indiscriminate punishment and advocates discriminate treatment. Punishments belong only in the family, to the army, and in penal institutions where it may be necessary to enforce discipline, and here only in moderate degree, because it is a well-known fact that to individuals, be they child or adult, who are not amenable to mild punishment, severer forms are worse than useless. The word punishment in every sense of its meaning ought to be eliminated from courts of justice. Goethe said that one of the most interesting books that could be written would be a treatise on the errors of mankind, and a glance backward over the records of courts of justice bring before us some of the most pitiful errors of the human race. Starting not only from the time when the prisoner charged with felony was not allowed to have counsel, nor his witnesses to be sworn, we see a steady reform which throws a black shadow of cruel wrongs behind it, and and leads us to hope that we are surely advancing to the time when the medical profession, itself shaking off the heavy drapery of ignorance and error, will go hand in hand with the law-giver in establishing sound and human principles of law and medicine, waiting to reclaim the unfortunate victims of disease whose morbid state leads him in the paths of crime. Without sickly sentiment or pity as an emotion which never does much good in this world, but with pity as a motive, which is a God-like force and when properly directed will accomplish great good, we, doctors and lawyers, banded together under the name of The Society of Medical Jurisprudence, can advance the science of criminology with more force and greater assurance of public approval than any other association of the learned profession. Law is defined as the sum of all knowledge, medicine as

the healer of all infirmities, mental and physical; in law the lawyer is confined to facts, the physician is allowed to express his opinion, but when cold and glittering facts are arrayed by a human mind trained to give no weight to other testimony, cruel injustice is often committed. Likewise, matters of opinion unsupported by facts are often worse than the grossest ignorance. When, however, these two combine, when opinion tempers facts and facts support opinion, the irresponsible sick who find their way by a well-beaten path to the bar of justice will not be sent to the jailer nor the executioner for a cure. Take any of the modern books on criminalogy or relating in any way to crime, and how quickly the truth is forced upon us that many of the criminal are victims of arrested brain development or actual brain disease. Nor is it always necessary to find brain and nerve disease as the only morbid factor causative of crime. It is conceded by the most eminent medical practitioners that slight functional derangements affect the will, often to such an extent that the ability to resist a criminal instinct or impulse is abolished. It will probably be many a day before these lighter ephemeral ailments will be admitted as testimony for mitigation in the judgement of crime, but we have, unfortunately, a large number of prominent brain lesions and nerve disturbances as material for many years of labor. Had the doctor been working hand in hand with the lawyer in the first quarter of this century, Thomas Wainwright, the murderer of four people, would not have been transported to Australia for the crime of forgery. This man, whose history is given in many works on criminalogy, was clever, with literary and artistic tastes and education; as antedating his crimes, he himself describes an attack of illness which left him a hypochondriac, "ever shadowing on the horrible abyss of mere insanity." After this he began to write essays under a non de plume, and was described then as a man of "many sentimentalities and superrefinements." He then committed his first crime of forging a draft, taking five thousand pounds from a fund on which he was drawing the interest, forgery at that time being a capital offense. He next poisoned his uncle, in order to get his house; his mother-in-law, for eighteen thousand pounds insurance on her life; his sister-in-law, because, as he said when asked why he killed her, "Upon my

sons.

soul, I do not know, except that she had thick legs.' The fourth murder was of a man whom he killed in order to obtain money on a life insurance, which, however, he could not collect. While in Australia, too, he made attempts to poison two perHe died of apoplexy at the age of fifty-eight, while serving out a sentence for his crime of forgery. Now, should this man have been punished by the law, or should we have been treated by the physician for chronic meningitis or some other brain lesion? Take a look at Inspector Byrne's book, The Professional Criminal of America. Among the photographs in this book taken from the Rogues' Gallery, we find No. 2, “David Bliss, alias Dr. Bliss. Sneak; thirty-nine years old in 1886, born in the United States; married; doctor; slim built; height, five feet eight inches and a half; weight, one hundred and thirty-five pounds; light-colored hair turning gray; gray eyes; long face; light complexion. Has a hole on the right side of his forehead. Record: The doctor has a fine education and is a graduate of a Cincinnati medical college; he is a Southerner by birth, and at one time held a prominent government position. He was caught stealing, however, and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. Through the influence of his friends he was pardoned, but again drifted back to evil ways." The record then goes on describing several other arrests and imprisonments, and says he is considered a very clever sneak thief. This is all the description we get with his photograph. Now, here we have a man of good birth and education and many influential friends. He has a hole in the right side of his forehead, which the photograph does not show, consequently we do not know the extent, or the exact locotion. There is another significant point in the description of this man-light hair turning gray. Of course, the significance of gray hair in a young person, especially one whose hair is naturally light, is not fully understood; but if one goes through a lunatic asylum he will observe something that has been always a puzzle to me—a very marked streak of gray hair just beyond the forehead in many young dark-haired female lunatics. This may be only a few hairs or a broad, pronounced streak; but I have always been impressed with the notion that an unusual occurrence of gray hair has some pathological significance. Certainly I do not mean to infer that every one who has

this streak of gray hair is insane, neither do I wish it to be taken that every one who is a lunatic has it, but I think it is significant and worthy of study, and I am not aware that any one has given it the attention it seems to deserve. Although this story from Byrne's book in relation to No. 2 in the Rogues' Gallery is vague, yet we cannot help feeling that such a man should at least have had the benefit of a thorough medical examination before he was allowed to become a habitual criminal. There is another remarkable character in Byrne's book. No. 98 in his gallery of photographs is Franklin J. Moses. Description: Forty-four years of age in 1886; born in South Carolina; lawyer; married; slim build; height, five feet eight inches and three quarters; weight, one hundred and thirty pounds; dark hair turning gray; blue eyes; sallow complexion; large Roman nose; generally wears a heavy mustache quite gray; dresses fairly well; good talker. Record: Ex-Governor Moses, of South Carolina; graduated from Columbia College, and served as private secretary to the governor of South Carolina for two years. Served as speaker of the house for two years; made governor, holding that office for two years. His father, an estimable man, was at one time chief-justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Shortly after his term of office expired Moses started in victimizing friend and foe alike. He was first arrested in New York city on a requisition from South Carolina for uttering a forged note for three hundred and sixteen dollars. When he arrived in South Carolina he was released on parole and allowed to escape. Was not this one of those instances of mistaken kindness? He was either an incorrigible thief or a victim of disease, and in either contingency he should not have been allowed to be at large. The remarkable fact about his subsequent swindles was that they were for small amounts. Byrnes, at all events, gives no sum above forty dollars. This man excited considerable vindictive contempt, especially among the judges and lawyers. Now, neither of these men, a doctor and a lawyer, appears to be just a common thief. Some of the drug habits or the alcoholic habit might have led to ex-Governor Moses's fall; if the latter, surely this is recognized as a disease amenable to treatment. There are many other surmises we might take from Byrne's book, but, however complete it may be for the