THE BACILLUS OF CRIME
FOR a number of years it has been known to all but a few ancient physicians—survivals from an exhausted régime—that all disease is caused bybacilli, which worm themselves into the organs that secrete health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and significance of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes, home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the testimony of so eminent bacteriologers as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their carping is as that of the impatient angler. Thebacillusis not to be denied; he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted. Doubtless we may confidently expect his eventual supersession by a fresher and more ingenious disturber of the physiological peace, but he is now chief among ten thousand evils and the one altogetherlovely, and it is futile to attempt to read him out of the party.
It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the criminal impulse in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must discover thebacillusof crime, which we now know is merely disease with another name. To that end we think that the bodies of hanged assassins and such patients of low degree as have been gathered to their fathers by the cares of public office or consumed by the rust of inactivity in prison should be handed over to a microscopical society for examination. The bore, too, offers a fine field for research, and might justly enough be examined alive. Whether there is one general—or as the ancient and honorable orders prefer to say, “grand”—bacillus, producing a general (or grand) criminal impulse generating a multitude of sins, or an infinite number of well defined and severalbacilli, each inciting to a particular crime, is a question to the determination of which the most distinguished microscopist might be proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the latter is the case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for clearly the patient afflicted with chronic assassination will require different medicines from those which might be efficaciousin a gentleman suffering from constitutional theft or the desire to represent his district in Congress. But it is permitted to us to hope that all the crimes, like all the arts, are essentially one; that murder, commerce and respectability are but different symptoms of the same physical disorder, at the back of which is a microbe vincible to a single medicament, albeit the same awaits discovery.
In the fascinating theory of the unity of crime we may not unreasonably hope to find another evidence of the brotherhood of man, another spiritual bond tending to draw the several classes of society more closely together. If such should be the practical effect of the great truth something will have been gained, even if the discovery of a suitable medicine to restore our enemies to health be delayed until all too late to save them from rude and primitive treatment by the sheriff.
1893.