normally developed. He has a superficial consciousness of having done something improper, but he is unconscious of the moral, social, and legal significance of his crimes.
K. comes of a drunken father, and a mother who became insane from the abuse of her husband, and died in an asylum. In his babyhood the boy was almost blinded by corneal ulcers, and, after his sixth year, he grew up with an almoner, and later with difficulty earned his living as an organ-grinder. His brother is good for nothing, and the culprit himself was considered a surly, quarrelsome, evil, moody, irritable man. The opinion emphasized the intellectual, moral, and physical defect of the culprit.
Unfortunately it must be admitted that the most revolting of these crimes are done by sane individuals who, by reason of satiety in normal sexual indulgence, lasciviousness, and brutality, and not seldom during intoxication, forget that they are human beings.
A great number of these cases, however, certainly depend upon pathological states. This is particularly true where old men become the seducers of children.[1]
I agree with Kirn, who, under all circumstances, in cases of this kind, holds a mental examination to be always necessary; since, frequently enough, a re-awakened, perverse, abnormally intense, and uncontrolable sexual desire is shown to be one of the manifestations of a senile dementia.
6. Unnatural Abuse—Sodomy.[2]
(Austrian Statutes, § 129; Abridgment, § 190; German Statutes, § 175.)
(a) Violation of Animals—Bestiality.[3]
Violation of animals, monstrous and revolting as it seems to mankind, is by no means always due to psycho-pathological
- ↑ Comp. Kirn, Allg. Zeitschr. f. Psych., 39, p. 217.
- ↑ I follow the usual terminology in describing bestiality and pederasty under the general term sodomy. In Genesis (chap. xix), whence this word comes, it signifies exclusively the vice of pederasty. Later, sodomy was often used synonymously with bestiality. The moral theologians, like St. Alphons of Liguori, Gury, and others, have always distinguished correctly, i.e., in the sense of Genesis, between sodomia, i.e., concubitus cum persona ejusdem sexus, and bestialitas, i.e., concubitus cum bestia (comp. Olfus, Pastoralmedicin, p. 78).
The jurists brought confusion into the terminology by establishing a "Sodomia ratione sexus" and a "S. ratione generis." Science, however, should assert itself as ansilla theologiæ, and return to the correct usage. - ↑ For interesting histories, vide Krauss, Psychol. d. Verbrechens, p. 180.—Maschka, Hdb. iii, p. 188.—Hofmann, Lehrb. d. ger. Med., p. 180.—Rosenbaum, Die Lustseuche.
