For this reason he leaves the investigation of such crimes to the lawyers.
Both Casper and Tardieu discuss the topic of sexual inversion with antipathy. But there are notable points of difference in the method and in the conclusions of the two authors. Tardieu, perhaps because he is a Frenchman, educated in the school of Paris, which we have learned to know from Carlier, assumes that all subjects of the passion are criminal or vicious. He draws no psychological distinction between pæderast and pæderast. He finds no other name for them, and looks upon the whole class as voluntarily degraded beings who, for the gratification of monstrous desires, have unsexed themselves. A large part of his work is devoted to describing what he believes to be the signs of active and passive immorality in the bodies of persons addicted to these habits.[1] It is evident that imagination has acted powerfully in the formation of his theories. But this is not the place to discuss their details.[2]
Casper and Liman approach the subject with almost equal disgust, but with more regard for scientific truth than Tardieu. They point out that the term pæderast
- ↑ Tardieu, op. cit., pp. 213-255.
- ↑ In dealing with Tardieu, Casper-Liman, and Tarnowsky, I have directed the reader to passages in the works of the three medical authorities who have spoken most decidedly upon this topic. After comparing their evidence, the case seems to me to stand thus. Both male and female prostitutes are exposed to considerable risks of physical deformation in the exercise of their illicit trade. But males and females, if they keep their vicious propensities within the bounds of temperance, offer no physical deformations to observation. Only those men who for years have practised promiscuous prostitution earn epithets like the Greek slang εὑρὑπρωκτος, or the Italian culo rotto.
