Tenchini’s legacy as a starting point for the reconstruction of the history of a criminal in the 19th century

Abstract

Late in the 19th century, physician Lorenzo Tenchini undertook a study of criminal subjects and psy-chiatric patients. One of these was B.A., a 22-year-old soldier who committed suicide after attempting to kill his lover, a prostitute named G.I. The starting points of this study were the analysis of the subject's biography – data which resulted from the autopsy – and several observations on his brain and skull in accordance with the phrenological doctrine of that time. The goal of this work was to shed new light on an Italian criminal of the late 19th century and on Tenchini's work, combining the material collected by the doctor himself with sources of the period and modern medical knowledge.