n its best clothes and cuts off its head with perfect calmness.
A lady, ignorant of horticulture, plants some flowers on her husband's
grave. A day or two later, noticing that they are drooping, she imagines
that the gardener has watered them with boiling water, and after
reproaching him bitterly, wounds him with a pair of scissors.

These unfortunate beings frequently show perfect mental clearness before
the crime and even in the act of striking the fatal blow; yet their
action is purely instinctive and not prompted by passion or any other
cause. Although such individuals appear to reason, can it be said that
they are in full possession of their mental faculties? If they are, how
shall we explain the wholesale destruction of those they hold most dear?
A husband kills the wife to whom he is sincerely attached; a father, the
son he loves most; or a mother, the infant at her breast.

Such an extraordinary phenomenon can only be explained by a sudden
suspension of the intellectual and moral faculties and of the powers of
the will.

SPECIAL FORMS OF CRIMINAL INSANITY

ALCOHOLISM

In addition to these casual forms of lunacy, in which the individual is
led to commit crime by a momentary alteration of his moral nature, we
find other forms which might be called specific, because the criminal
act forms the culminating point of the malady. The sufferers from these
forms are less easily distinguished from ordinary criminals and normal
persons than are the lunatics of whom we have just spoken. These mental
diseases, which should be studied separately, are alcoholism, hysteria,
and epilepsy.

It is well known that temporary drunkenness may transform an honest,
peacable individual into a rowdy, a murderer, or a thief.

Gall narrates the case of a certain Petri, who manifested homicidal
tendencies when excited by alcohol. Locatelli mentions a workman of
thirty, who, when under the influence of drink, would smash everything
around him and stab the companions who sought to restrain his drunken
fury. Ladelci and Carmignani cite the case of a miner, who was
repeatedly arrested for drunken brawls, and when reproved replied: "I
cannot help it. As soon as I drink, I must start fighting."

Very characteristic is the case of a certain Papor... who was imprisoned
for some time at Turin. His father was a drunkard and ill treated his
wife. The son became a soldier, then an excise officer, fireman, and
finally nurse in an infirmary, and