Lombroso, Lie Detectors, and the Law According to Lidia Poët

In one episode of The Law According to Lidia Poët, our heroine mentions a device called a "volumetric glove." Because standard Googling is not going to get you far with this, I searched Google Books, 19th century, and found this treatise on Criminal Man, by Gina Limbroso. This business about the volumetric glove is interesting for several reasons: first, it was an early lie detector; second, it was a tool that grew out of early psychiatric testing to be used for criminal investigation, and demonstrates the close relationship of those two fields—not to mention how the tools of one can be used as weapons in the other.

Here is the transcribed text from the scanned book, edited slightly for length:

"It is well known that any emotion which causes the heart-beats to quicken or become slower makes us blush or turn pale, and these vaso-motor pheomena are entirely beyond our control. If we plunge one of our hands into the volumetric tank [...], the level of the liquid ... will rise and fall at every pulsation, [...] and variations may be observed which correspond to every stimulation of the senses, every thought and above all, every emotion. 

"The volumetric glove [...] is a still more practical and convenient apparatus. It consists of a large gutta-percha glove, which is put on the hand and hermetically sealed at the writes by a mixture of mastic and vaseline. The glove is filled with air as the tank was with water. The greater or smaller pressure exercised on the air by the pulsations of blood in the veins of the hands reacts on the aerial column of an india-rubber tube, and this in its turn on Marey's tympanum (a small chamber half metal and half gutta-percha). This chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator, which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand. This lever registered the oscillations on a moving cylinder covered with smoked paper. 

"If after talking to the patient on indifferent subjects, the examiner suddenly mentions persons, friends, or relatives, who interest him and cause him a certain amount of emotion, the curve registered on the revolving cylinder suddenly drops and rises rapidly, thus proving that he possesses natural affections. If, on the other hand, when alluding to relatives and their illnesses, or vice-versa, no corresponding movement is registered on the cylinder, it may be assumed that the patient does not possess much affection.

"My father sometimes made successful use of the plethysmograph to discover whether an accused person was guilty of the crim imputed to him, by mentioning it suddenly while his hands were in the plethysmograph or placing the photograph of the victim unexpectedly before his eyes." (Lombroso, 1887)

The "father" mentioned above was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician, criminologist, and phrenologist. As may be inferred from above, Cesare made a career out of attempting to determine the cause of criminal behavior. Cesare's theory was that criminality or lack of morals was inherent, which was influenced by common common racist assumptions of the day and heavily leaned on by lawmakers and monied persons who wanted to keep the hoi polloi in line. Proponents believed both criminals and "lower" races were less evolved and therefore closer to animals in nature. Lombroso made much of criminal activities running in families and published several works about the physical characteristics of criminals, such as the shape of their heads and other features. An early form of racial profiling, if you will.

An early lie-detecting glove, and what a criminal looks like, according to Lombroso. 

Our modern sensibilities aside, Lombroso's work was a little more advanced that the old way of thinking that criminals were just sinners who needed saving/punishment. His theories were disputed even at the time; phrenology and other mechanical explanations for psychiatric illness were not universally accepted even in the 1880s. Other researchers built on his work, which led to closer examinations of criminal behavior, leading psychiatry and criminology further away from simple assumptions of sin and wickedness, and toward advances in treatment of criminals and the insane.

There is a very good summation of Lombroso's work and the developing "science" of criminology (forgive the ironic quotes—it's hard to take these early efforts seriously by today's ethical standards) in the book 1877: America's Year of Living Violently by Michael A. Bellesiles.