Due Tribuni. Studiati da un alienista

Rome: Casa Editrice Sommaruga, 1883. FIRST EDITION. Original printed wrappers, front wrapper detached. Unopened. First and only edition of Lombroso's intriguing study of a persecution complex in which he compares and contrasts eccentric personalities. He here describes one Tito Livio Cianchettini (1821-1900), a Roman newspaperman also known as "the philosopher of the sidewalk" who published, edited and distributed his own satirical journal, "The Traverso of the Ideas," in which he criticized the evils of humanity. While many regarded him as crazy, a few, including Lombroso, thought he was a genius. Through his analysis of characters like Cianchettini, Lombroso proposes a new psychiatric-zoologic theory and concludes with examples of "crazy politics" to highlight his theory.

Lombroso (1835-1909) produced numerous volumes of work on a variety of deviant behaviors. His interest and activity in criminology arose out of the conduct and demeanor of tattooed soldiers he observed while a physician in the Italian army. He went on to study, first, the psychological and physiological differences between criminals and lunatics, and then the wider analysis of the criminal compared with those deemed to be either genius or insane. A follower of Auguste Comte, Lombroso was a professor at Pavia who went on to become director of a lunatic asylum in Pesaro, then Professor of Forensic Medicine and Psychiatry at Turin.