ABSTRACT
Moriz Benedikt (1835-1920), a professor of neurology at the University of Vienna, wrote his book Anatomical Studies upon Brains of Criminals, he tells us, “to furnish the foundation stones toward a Natural History of Crime.” Like Lombroso, with whose work he was familiar, Benedikt began with the assumption that “a defective, atypically-constructed brain, cannot function normally.” He dissected the brains of various executed criminals, describing them in minute detail and also, in the original edition, in photographical detail. (E. P. Fowler’s English translation converted the photographs to line drawings.) Given his premise and interest in criminal anthropology, it is not surprising that Benedikt concluded, as in this extract, that criminals have abnormal brains and should be considered a separate, anthropological variety of the human species.
