Criminal man : according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso / briefly summarised by Gina Lombroso Ferrero.

  • Gina Lombroso
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Criminal man : according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso / briefly summarised by Gina Lombroso Ferrero. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/390 page 6
    was requested to make a post-mortem examina- tion on a criminal named Vilella, an Italian Jack the Ripper, who by atrocious crimes had spread terror in the Province of Lombardy. Scarcely had he laid open the skull, when he perceived at the base, on the spot where the internal occipital crest or ridge is found in normal individuals, a small hollow, which he called median occipital fossa (see Fig. i). This abnormal character was cor- related to a still greater anomaly in the cerebellum, the hypertrophy of the vermis, i.e., the spinal cord which separates the cerebellar lobes lying under- neath the cerebral hemispheres. This vermis was so enlarged in the case of Vilella, that it almost formed a small, intermediate cerebellum like that found in the lower types of apes, rodents, and birds. This anomaly is very rare among inferior races, with the exception of the South American Indian tribe of the Aymaras of Bolivia and Peru, in whom it is not infrequently found (40%). It is seldom met with in the insane or other degenerates, but later investiga- tions have shown it to be prevalent in criminals. This discovery was like a flash of light. “At the sight of that skull,” says my father, “I seemed to see all at once, standing out clearly illumined as in a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal, who reproduces in civilised
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