nds at last in
complete dementia or general pseudo-paralysis. The body is at first
obese, but rapidly loses flesh, the skin becomes greasy and damp, owing
to hypersecretion of the sebaceous and sudoriparous glands, and soils
the garments. Memory becomes enfeebled, speech uncertain and defective
(dysarthria), the association of ideas sluggish, sensibility blunted,
perception confused, judgment erroneous, and every species of regular
and continued application impossible. The earlier hallucinations
reappear, but in a less vivid form and only at long intervals; then
paralysis more or less rapidly becomes general and ends in death.

EPILEPSY

We have spoken of this disease in another chapter and have shown that
the born criminal is in reality an epileptic, in whom the malady,
instead of manifesting itself suddenly in strange muscular contortions
or terrible spasms, develops slowly in continual brain irritation, which
causes the individual thus affected to reproduce the ferocious egotism
natural to primitive savages, irresistibly bent on harming others.

But besides these epileptics, who are morally insane from their birth
and pass their lives in prisons and lunatic asylums, without any one
being able to mark the exact boundary between their perversity and their
irresponsibility; besides these individuals, whom society has a right,
nay a moral obligation, to remove from its midst because they are ever a
source of danger there are those who are afflicted with other forms of
epilepsy;--forms in which irritation is manifested in seizures exactly
similar to the typical convulsive fit, which they resemble also with
regard to variation in intensity and duration. Generally speaking, they
are likewise accompanied by complete loss of memory and consciousness,
but in some cases there may be partial or complete consciousness, and
yet the sufferer is not responsible for his actions. This variety of
epilepsy, termed by Samt psychic epilepsy (epilepsy with psychic
seizures), manifests itself at long intervals, sometimes only once, but
more frequently twice or thrice in the course of a lifetime, and during
the attack the personality of the individual undergoes a complete
change.

The attack is described by Samt as follows: During the seizure, the
individual behaves like a somnambulist. Sometimes he is dazed, mute, and
immovable; at others, he talks incessantly; at still others, he goes on
with his ordinary occupations, travelling, rea