The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1885-04-10
Transmission by Inheritance.

No one doubts the existence of the
inherited tendency to govt or to con-
sumption, and to the physician the evil
denCes Of the alcoholic faint are as I'M
mistakable as are the evidences of the
inheritance of these two English
scOurges. Without their consent many
innocent human creatures are, through
the selfish indulgence of parents, born
into the world with fearsome birth
right. Stamped upoI their whole ma
ture is the seal of alcoholic heredity, the
seal of law of nature rs immovable as
the law OF gravitation, in virtue Of
which law of inherited alcoholism the
unconscious babe is of the number of
these "weak brethren" who have so
delicate susceptibility to alcohol that
if they drink at all, they drink to ex-
cess.
There is but one means by which
these can be sure of escaping this terri
BILE fate-by persisting in declining TO
drink their intoxicating, their heredit-
airy foe, in any circumstances. Thr alb
stineuce must be unconditional for
them to be safe. On no pretence of
custom, of business, of fashion, of
physic, or of religion, can such persons
sip the intoxicating cup without immi-
nent peril to their tenn poral and eternal
welfare.
This inherited tendency to excess in
drink lasts with the life of the inheritor.
The longer he perseveres in the resolve
of strict abs entiou, the stronger will he
be to resist the advances and defeat the
wiles of his ancestral enemy; but it
ever he parley with it he is in immediate
danger of being overcome. He must
never lay aside his armour of absolute
abstinence and if at the close of long,
noble, and truly temperate life he look
back, he may truthfully say, in the
words of the poet;
"What secret fight
EVIL and good IN woven passion mailed,
Vaged through that SILENT throng-a war that
never iailed.'
This baneful inheritance may be
handed down by parents who have
never drank to what is commonly call
ed drunkenness" and, as the human
eye cannot discern the innate bias, the
constitutional prOclivities of the newly
born, how needful it is to train up the
young people in the only safe habit of
total abstinence!
The inherited alcoholic tendency to
excess may very quickly be developed
on tasting an intoxicant, sometimes,
indeed, almost as speedily rs train of
gun-p powder may break out into flame
on the application OF light. This, to
a considerable extent accounts for the
existence OF that shocking juvenile
drunkenness which so few philan-
hropists seem to recognize to be deep
dishonor and foul disgrace to the Brit
ish name. 1t is true that the constitu-
tional failing may not openly assert il
self till late in life, as in the case Of a
clergyman who became a drunkard at
the age of eighty-six; but an inquiry
into the family history of any group OF
our numerous boy and girl inebrates
will disclose the proofs of the active
life of this Unborn and appalling cancer
at a very tender age.
Let the young ever remember, aud
the old never forget, that the only Ger.
tain escape from the awful consequent
ces of alcoholic heredity lies in absolute
and unconditional abstinenc from all
intoxicating liquors.