Dr. Algieri, the director of this asylum, showed us among others a very
interesting case. This was a man of about 45, whose history was shortly
the following: He was a bricklayer living in one of the cities of
Toscana. He had been a normal and honest man, a very good father, until
one unlucky day came, in which a brick falling from a factory broke a
part of his skull. He fell down unconscious, was picked up, carried to
the hospital, and cured of his external injury, but lost both his
physical and moral health. He became an epileptic.
And the lesion to which the loss of the normal function of his nervous
system was due transformed him from the docile and even-tempered man
that he had been into a quarrelsome and irritable individual, so that
he was less regular in his work, less moral and honest in his family
life, and was finally sentenced for a grave assault in a saloon brawl.
He was condemned as a common criminal to I don't know how many years of
imprisonment. But in prison, the exceptional conditions of seclusion
brought on a deterioration of his physical and moral health, his
epileptic fits became more frequent, his character grew worse. The
director of the prison sent him to the asylum for the insane criminals
at Montelupo, which shelters criminals suspected of insanity and insane
criminals.
Dr. Algieri studied the interesting case and came to the diagnosis that
there was splinter of bone in the man's brain which had not been noticed
in the treatment at the hospital, and that this was the cause of the
epilepsy and demoralization of the prisoner.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94