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The discovery of the “fossette” and the theory of the criminal man
Later editions of Criminal Man and the development of Lombroso studies
The last studies
The Cesare Lombroso Museum
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The discovery of the “fossette” and the theory of the criminal man
In November 1872, Lombroso performed an autopsy on the body of Giuseppe
Villella, a seventy-year-old Calabrian brigand, whom he had already examined in prison the previous year. The autopsy Lombroso performed on Villella’s skull revealed an anomaly in the cranial structure, a smooth concavity in the occipital area described as the median occipital fossette.
The discovery of the fossette convinced Lombroso that this anomaly was not present in “normal” individuals, but only in the skulls of madmen and criminals and is the “proof” that criminals are born: the insane, criminals, wild individuals, humanoids and extinct species, criminal and psychiatric deviant behaviour all have a single atavistic cause. The studies on the cause of crime and the theory of atavistic crime are contained in the volume L’uomo delinquente (Criminal Man) first published in 1876, the year in which Lombroso moved to Turin to take up the chair in forensic medicine at the university. Later he set up a laboratory that was to become the forge for his researches in forensic medicine and criminal anthropology. Subsequently Lombroso partially modified his original theory of the criminal man.
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