And on this assumption the insane were locked up in horrible dungeons,
loaded down with chains, tortured and beaten, for lo! their insanity was
their own fault.

At that period, Pinel advanced the revolutionary idea that insanity was
not a sin, but a disease like all other diseases. This idea is now a
commonplace, but in his time it revolutionized the world. It seemed as
though this innovation inaugurated by Pinel would overthrow the world
and the foundations of society. Well, two years before the storming of
the Bastile Pinel walked into the sanitarium of the Salpetriere and
committed the brave act of freeing the insane of the chains that weighed
them down. He demonstrated in practice that the insane, when freed of
their chains, became quieter, instead of creating wild disorder and
destruction. This great revolution of Pinel, Chiarugi, and others,
changed the attitude of the public mind toward the insane. While
formerly insanity had been regarded as a moral sin, the public
conscience, thanks to the enlightening work of science, henceforth had
to adapt itself to the truth that insanity is a disease like all
others, that a man does not become insane because he wants to, but that
he becomes insane through hereditary transmission and the influence of
the environment in which he lives, being predisposed toward insanity and
becoming insane under the pressure of circumstances.

The positive school of criminology accomplished the same revolution in
the views concerning the treatment of criminals that the above named men
of science accomplished for the treatment of the insane. The general
opinion of classic criminalists and of the people at large is that crime
involves a moral guilt, because it is due to the free will of the
individual who leaves the path of virtue and chooses the path of crime,
and therefore it must be suppressed by meeting it with a proportionate