Criminologists have long contended that every habitual criminal is sick, not the impulsive criminal, but the habitual.

There is every reason to believe that this is a reasonable contention, for why should one commit crime if he is as well as he should be?

To be well is to be happy, and when one is happy he has no evil desires or intentions.

Careful examination and complete Bertillons of many thousands of life prisoners furnished sufficient evidence of this statement to prove it well, for these men were not in normal health, nearly all of them exhibiting major deficiencies, and all of them exhibiting minor ones.

The teeth were in poor condition nearly always, the bony development was deficient, the shape of the head and the lower jaw showed deficient development, the palatal arch was too high and the teeth crowded.

This is to be expected in the criminal, for he is such because he feels that he has always gotten the worst of it from the world, and seeks to get even.

Resentment for what one believes is less than his due is a motivating impulse toward recrimination and revenge, and is a state that is directly bred by substandard physique.

When one is as perfect physically as he should be, he is consciously a master of his fate, and defies the world to give him the worst of it, for he feels himself equal to any circumstances that may be in his way in achieving his ends, without resort to weapons or stealth or subterfuge.

Individual cases have come to light of prisoners, some of them life convicts, who, while serving life sentences, have stumbled on health literature that so changed their whole lives that in spite of the imperfect fare of the average penal institution they have remade themselves, and have told the world their tale in most convincing manner.

It is a pity that such a one could not in this way secure his freedom, for henceforth he will be free from criminal instincts and should make a more useful citizen than the average outside compulsory durance.

It is small wonder that the average prisoner leaves the confinement of a State penitentiary worse for his incarceration than before his entrance, for he is there thrown in with the dregs of society, and fed almost always on the cheapest of foods, consisting largely of denatured stuff, white bread, boiled vegetables, some meats, with but little natural food in the form of greens and fruits.

If this opportunity were embraced by organizations for the uplift of the criminal it would be possible to reform all of these men who are not hopelessly degraded, for to achieve new health is possible to any one who is fed properly for a considerable time.

It is not to be presumed that deficient and abnormal feeding will make a criminal of any one who suffers from this, for it is not natural for some to feel criminal inclinations, so deficiencies of deep type may never show abnormal tendency to ways that are dark, but, other things being equal, the deficiencies may be the determining factor in shaping a career of crime; yet the percentage of these is but a fraction of that found in disease where no tendency to crime shows.

Teachers note that the incorrigible boys are physically abnormal, in nearly every case, no doubt from the very same causes: a physical state that almost makes normal thinking and feeling an impossibility.

The habitual criminal is recruited largely from this same class of incorrigible boys, carrying the deficiencies, which may be wholly from early feeding habits, into adult life, and continuing the condition with which he grew up.

It would be a laudable undertaking to institute a series of tests on the feeding of the habitual criminal, if some enterprising state would turn over an institution for this purpose, and it is the firm belief of the writer that a very large percentage of the inmates could safely be turned out again into society, if this experiment were continued sufficiently long to inculcate a new habit of food selection and combination.

Perhaps the ideal place for such a demonstration would be a farm for incorrigible boys, a house of correction, for this would give opportunity for making good the usual deficiencies before growth is completed, and at a time when habit is more easily and permanently corrected.

If some society would interest itself in this work it would be doing far more for the future good of these boys than interminable confinement and moral training without this dietary correction.

To be well poised always, the state of mind closely depends on the physical state.

So far as the writer knows there has not been to date any really scientific test of this theory in actual practice, though sporadic and poorly supported attempts have heretofore been undertaken for insufficient periods.

To secure at all conclusive evidence in such feeding experiments the period should not be less than six months for boys and twice this period for grown men, as shorter periods, while showing some physical regeneration, of course, would not have continued long enough to affect habit permanently.

Not only should the feeding be changed in such a way as to include little but natural foods in vital condition, but this should be accompanied by such course of training in food selection and combination as would leave each with a full understanding of the basic essentials of diet. Unless one knows why he is doing certain things the necessity for a continuance of the plan will not have sufficiently impressed itself on the mind to make its continuance probable.

Laboratory experiments in the feeding of the small animals has developed the fact that irritability regularly follows the creation of deficiencies; the inoffensive white rat becoming fierce and untrustworthy, while this same rat, when its deficiencies are fully restored, resumes its formerly placid temper, and can again be handled without danger of biting the hand.