The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1889-11-16
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
ALCOHOLIC ENTAILMENTs.
The Personal and Transmitted Results
of hebriety.

The Personal and Transmitted Results
of hebriety.
While students of this phase of social
life have not of late doubted as to the
extent of alcoholic entailments, the pub
lie, says the New York Independent, are
so used to fastening their attention on
the excessive results that the extent OF
the impairment in health, citizenship
and morals is much overlooked. In the
October number (1SsS) of The Quarterly
Journal of Inebriety, DR.. L. ID. Mason
has given so satisfactory summary that
we shall quote chiefly from it:
Richardson, in his Cantor Lectures on Alco-
hol,' writes: Among the many inscrutable de-
signs Of nature none is more manifest than this,
that physical vice, like physical feature and
physical virtue, descends in line Not one OF
the transmitted wrongs, physical or mental is
more certainly passed on to those yet unborn
than the wrongs which are inflicted by alcohol
'Blanford, writing on the causes Of insanity,
says: Though the parents may not have been
insane, they may have become the subjects Of
neuroses, which in their progeny become in
sanity; they may have been Chronic drunk
ards" epileptics hypochondriacs etc.
'Dr. Sykke, physician to the city hospital,
Copenhagen, Denmark, writes: Bruhl Cramer,
from long examination of this subject, con-
cludes that drunken parents are seldom prolific,
and when so the children are stupid, malicious
and full Of mental defects
''Skae collected So cases of dipsomania. In g
cases Inheritance was clearly marked. In col
lateral branches he found drunkenness, dipso-
mania, suicide, mental disease.
"Dr. Martin, while inferno at Salpetriere, OBJ
talned data Of heredity in SO insane epileptics
out of 100. OF these SO, in 80 cases he estab-
ished Incorporate habits in parents. There
were pa brothers and sisters in this class of
90 cases; 100 of these were dead; 112 were still
living, mostly young; many with defective
nerve organizations.
THE American testimony is equally con-
elusive on this point. The late DR.. D. G. Dodge
superintendent OF the New York State In
ebriate Asylum, writes: Like all hereditary
diseases, intemperance is transmitted from
parent to child as much as scrofula, govt or
consumption. 1t observes the laws of trans
mitted disease. 1t sometimes overlaps one gen.
GRAFTON (ataviSm) and appears in the succeed
ing, or it will miss even the third generation
and then reappear in all it's former activity and
violence. Hereditary inebriety, like all trans
mitted diseases, gives the least hope Of a per-
manent cure, and temporary relief is all that
can be reasonably expected
"Dr. Joseph Parrish, in his work on Alcoholic
Inebriety,' considering hereditary inebriates'
and the alcoholic diathesis,' says: Not only
is there transmission, but transmutation Of
disease by heredity. Inebriety may descend as
inebriety, but it is just as likely to change the
form of its appearance into insanity or other al
lied morbid manifestation"
. DR.. L. D. Mason, in 900 cases which
have been under his observation and
treatment in the Inebriate Home, Fort
Hamilton, n. Y, finds heredity in 265.
Crothers, Day, Elan and many others
confirm these views.
!. The testimony of British medical ex-
perts before the House of Commons is as
extensive as it is valuable.
; "Dr. David Skae, physician to the Royal
Edinburgh Asylum for Insanity, testified: Dip
somania he regarded as q species Of moral in
sanity. The causes were mostly hereditary al
though some were caused by blows on the
head, hemorrhage with large loss of blood and
sometimes by disease of the brain"
DR. Alexander Peddie, physician of thirty
seven years practice in Edinburgh, Scotland,
has for twenty years paid especial attention to
the causes and effects Of intemperance, and
also written upon the subject from medical
standpoint, testified: He could cite scores of
cases that had come under his notice in proof of
the transmission from drunken parents to their
children Of proclivity to drink. =,
"Dr. Arthur Mitchell, Commissioner Of Lu
macy for Scotland, testified In some men
habitual drinking leads to other diseases than
insanity, because the effect is always in the di-
rection Of the proclivity but it is certain that
there are many in whom there is a clear pro-
cliVity to insanity who would escape that con.
summation but for drinking. Excessive drink
Ing in many persons determining the insanity
10 which they are at any rate predisposed. The
children Of habitual drunkards are in a larger
proportion idiotic than other children and a
larger proportion themselves drunkards. They
are also in a larger proportion liable to the
ordinary forms OF acquired insanity
DIR Forbes Winslow testified: "A large pro-
portion Of frightful mental and brain disturb
ances can be traced to the drunkenness of par
ents, confirming the great physiological law
that like begets like''
"Dr. F. f. Anstie, who testified in similar
way, adds in another place as follows: In the
course OF large experience Of alcoholism
among hospital out-p patients, have been great
ly struck with the number of drinkers who have
Informed me that their relatives either on the
patcrnal or maternal side have been given to
drink; my own experience has led me to a firm
conviction that particular causes of nervous de-
generation affecting individuals do very fire.
quently lead to the transmission to the off
spring of those persons Of an enfeebled nervous
organization which renders them peculiarly La
BILE to the severe neuross and which also makes
them facile victims of the temptations to seek
oblivion for their mental and bodily pains in
narcotic indulgence. l believe that things often
work in vicious circle to this end, and that the
nervous enfeeblement produced in an ancestor
By great excuses in drink is reproduced in his
various descendants with the effect of produc-
ing insanity in one, epilepsy in another, neu-
ralgia in third, alcoholic excuses in a fourth,
and so on. There is an inherited nervous weak.
so1., IL.
tai trouble specially hard to be borne''