title page and selected illustrated pages of 1777 book 'Physiognomisches Cabinet für Freunde und Schüler der Menschenkenntniß' by Johann Caspar (or Kaspar) Lavater
1924 illustration by Albert Reid depicting the spirits of presidential assassins John Wilkes Booth and Charles Julius Guiteau. The tagline "they might have gone free with modern procedure" is a reference to the then-popular practice of determining mental illness via family history, informed by eugenic conceptions of heredity and degeneration. According to this logic, these two assassins would not have been executed in "modern times" because psychiatrists would have identified them as "insane" and therefore incapable of understanding the nature of their actions, becoming institutionalized in asylums instead of executed by the state.
