The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover new images.
Psychiatric patient examined with Weber’s esthesiometer, late 19th-early 20th century.
Unidentified photographer, albumen print on cardboard.
The esthesiometer, developed by the German physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber, was a device for measuring the different grades of skin’s sensitivity. Lombroso used it to measure the tactile sensitivity of psychiatric patients and criminals.
This portrait, that reads on the back annotations on the measurements obtained through the esthesiometer, shows how photography was considered by positivist scientist a documentary proof to be associated with anthropometric measurements, statistical data, drawings and biological and psychological descriptions.