In the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso and his followers performed autopsies on criminals and declared that they had discovered similarities between their corpses and the bodies of "primitive humans". Lombroso went on to outline 14 physical characteristics which he and his followers believed to be common to all criminals. But British scientist Charles Buckman Goring, working in the same area, concluded that there was no noticeable physiological differences between law-abiding people and those who committed crimes. Maurice Parmelee, seen as the founder of modern criminology in America, also rejected Lombroso's theory, which was eventually withdrawn from the field of accepted criminological research.
An avid disciple of Lombroso's hires Paladin to help him find (and physically analyze) a notorious ex-gunfighter who has killed plenty of men in his time. It doesn't matter that they were all victims of a fair fight, or that the man who gunned them down now only wants to be left in peace. Professor Avatar (the word originally defined a person embodying an idea or concept) believes he has found in Jake Trueblood a perfect exemplar of Lombrosos's theory. But it isn't just cranial measurements the Professor is after: he wants Jake's actual skull to display in order to bolster his argument that some men are simply "born criminals". And only Paladin stands between Jake and the Professor's intentions.
Lambroso's theory (among other things) is cleverly "shot down" in this episode; alas, it seems to keep resurrecting itself under the one guise or another to this day.
An avid disciple of Lombroso's hires Paladin to help him find (and physically analyze) a notorious ex-gunfighter who has killed plenty of men in his time. It doesn't matter that they were all victims of a fair fight, or that the man who gunned them down now only wants to be left in peace. Professor Avatar (the word originally defined a person embodying an idea or concept) believes he has found in Jake Trueblood a perfect exemplar of Lombrosos's theory. But it isn't just cranial measurements the Professor is after: he wants Jake's actual skull to display in order to bolster his argument that some men are simply "born criminals". And only Paladin stands between Jake and the Professor's intentions.
Lambroso's theory (among other things) is cleverly "shot down" in this episode; alas, it seems to keep resurrecting itself under the one guise or another to this day.