Lauvergne mentions a convict, imprisoned for life, who smiled with pleasure when, moxas having been applied to him, he saw his skin burning and heard it crack. Sbro ... (who killed his brother and his father), Lombroso's favourite typical case of "moral insanity," was found by Tamburini and Seppilli to be without perception of pain when tested with a needle. Other criminals have been found very deficient in sensibility to the electric current. Dr. Nicolson remarked: "They are comparatively free from that agitation and tremulousness which are so apt to arise under circumstances involving suspense and painful foreboding. The prisoner with the knowledge of a probable flogging on the morrow, instead of giving way to restlessness and anxiety, maintains a calm and stolid behaviour." It is not uncommon to read in the newspapers of criminals who hold out their hands to be handcuffed without the slightest trembling, and who eat heartily on the eve of execution, or even while the jury above are still deliberating on their fate.
One of Rossi's hundred criminals received when a child his father's blows "as caresses," and he was able to walk with a dislocated foot from Genoa to Novi (some thirty miles); another wounded himself severely and declared that it gave him no pain. Dr. Penta, in the course of his elaborate researches, found that the majority of his 184 instinctive criminals at Santo Stefano were insensible to the pain of punctures, burns, cuts, and even grave surgical operations. "I have extirpated tumours," he remarks, "of considerable size, in the back and the neck, without the necessity of producing anæsthesia, and without causing pain; in a case of feigned epilepsy ammonia to the nose caused no reflex phenomenon, and deep puncture and burning of the skin produced no painful contraction."
This insensibility shows itself also in disvulnerability, or rapid recovery from wounds, first pointed out by Benedikt, which appears to be a frequently observed phenomenon among criminals; thus it had been noticed by several of the medical officers of prisons who answered my Questions.[42] In this respect the instinctive criminal resembles the lower animals as well as the lower races of man; among the Egyptians, Chinese, and Annamites, and other races, wounds heal much more rapidly than in Europe. Thus Mr. Tregear remarks:--"I have seen a Maori speared with a big rafting-spear (an iron-shod pole thicker than the wrist), the point driven through the breast, just under the collar-bone, and coming out at the back. In a week's time he walked fifteen miles, crossing a mountain range, the wound being healed."[43] Benedikt speaks of a brigand who, in a revolt of prisoners, had several vertebræ broken; all his wounds healed, and the giant of former days became a dwarf, but he could work at the forge with a heavy hammer with all his old vigour. Lombroso knew a thief whose frontal bone was cloven laterally with a hatchet; in fifteen days he was cured without any relapse. He speaks also of a murderer who, when working as a mason, was reproved for some fault; he threw himself from the third storey into the court; every one supposed he was killed, but he got up, smiling, and asked to be allowed to continue work. A pregnant woman performed on herself Cæsarean section with a kitchen knife, subsequently killing the child; she recovered without dressings and without fever. We hear also of a criminal with a fractured rib and pleurisy who could hew wood and travel in a cart over rough mountain roads. "Individuals who possess this quality," Lombroso remarks, "consider themselves privileged, and treat with contempt those who appear delicate and sensitive. It is a pleasure to such men to torment others whom they regard as inferior beings."