of having taken her to a convent, where she was seduced by a
priest, the nuns acting as accomplices. A subsequent medical examination
proved that no seduction had taken place and that she was suffering from
hysteria.

In another case, a girl of sixteen, the daughter of an Italian general,
complained to her father that a certain lieutenant, her neighbour at
table, had used indecent language to her. Shortly afterwards, a shower
of anonymous letters troubled the peace of the household--declarations
of love addressed to the girl's mother and threats to the daughter. It
was discovered that the girl herself was the writer of all these
letters.

Anonymous letter-writing is so common among hysterical persons, that it
may be considered a pathognomonical characteristic. The handwriting is
of a peculiar character, or rather it shows a peculiar tendency to vary
from excessive size to extreme smallness, a characteristic we have
noticed in epileptics.

_Delirium._ Hysterical, like epileptic, subjects often suffer from
melancholia or monomaniacal delirium. Indeed, according to Morel, this
symptom is more frequent when the other morbid phenomena are absent.

Psychic hysteria, like epilepsy, may exist unaccompanied by the
characteristic hysterical attack, and then, as is the case with
epilepsy, it is most dangerous to society.

In conclusion, although up to the present, medical men have been
disposed to consider hysteria as a disease distinct from epilepsy,
careful study of this malady inclined my father to class it as a
variation of epilepsy, prevalent among women, who in this disease, as in
many others, manifest an attenuated form.

CHAPTER IV

_CRIMINALOIDS_

We have seen how, owing to disease, alcoholism and epilepsy, physically
and psychically degenerate individuals make their appearance in a
community of normal persons. But a large proportion of the crimes
committed cannot be attributed to lunatics, epileptics, or the morally
insane, nor do all criminals show that aggregate of atavistic and morbid
characters,--the cruelty and bestial insensibility of the savage, the
impulsiveness of the epileptic, the licentiousness, delusions, and
impetuosity of the madman,--which we find united in the born criminal.

According to statistics obtained by my father, the share contributed to
the sum total of criminality by this latter type is only 33%, which
appears to be a magic figure for the criminal, since it corresponds to