‘Disease is a crime; and crime a disease now unknown’: Changing Views of Crime in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Culture

This paper highlights a dramatic change that took place in the conceptualisation of crime during the course of the modern age due to the shift from a worldview that pivoted on religion to one that has been increasingly informed by scientific thought. The association between crime and sin, prevalent in the medieval and early-modern ages, gradually weakened throughout the nineteenth century, giving way to a corresponding nexus between crime and disease (notably insanity and epilepsy), which in turn came to be scrutinised as the cause of antisocial behaviour. This nexus became particularly relevant in those late nineteenth- century, pseudo-scientific texts that pivoted on the concepts of atavism, heredity, and degeneration. To study the development of the discourses of crime – also in relation to detection and punishment – this paper analyses both literary and pseudo-scientific sources.