River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1903-01-01
A Startling Truth.

A French physician has announced
startling discovery. AS the re-
suit of fifteen years study in hospi-
tails and prisons he publishes his
conclusion that Is per cent. of the
hospital patients inherited vitiated
constitutions from alcoholic par
ents, and that IS per cent. of the
criminals received the germ of
their criminal instinct before birth.
He also says that no habitual
drunkard can have sound children
and that out of several thousand
drunkards' children examined not
one exception was found. This is
an awful indictment and makes the
drunkard a double criminal.
Note the sweeping statement: No
habitual drunkard can have sound
children. And in the examination
of several thousand drunkards'
children not one exception was
found. The drinking father who is
rearing a family of children and
imagines that he is doing harm to
himself only, should take to heart
very seriously this tremendous and
awful fact based on universal OBJ
servation and experience and on
the latest discovery of science.
The deadly poison which gradually,
but none the less surely, perme-
ates the entire system of the drunk
ard, is, by inheritance, transmitted
to his sons and daughters who in
turn hand down to the next genera
ton and the next the diseased brain
and body of their drunken father.
Who shall say what will be the
progeny of the drunkard? If he
have brought children into the
world he is guilty of a triple crime:
he has robbed the world of a good
example and of his own life's use
fitness, and second, he has de-
prived his family of that care and
protection and helpfulness which
nature teaches him as his duty and
third, he goes into eternity leaving
as his legacy to humanity children
of diseased brain and moral ma
ture and a possible drunkard with
all the evils that accompany such a
life, for every child of which he is
the father. 1t is an awful thought
and carries with it responsibility
which if fully realized would crush
out a human life, the thought of be-
queathing to the world young men
and women with the germ of a Grim
inal instinct born into them. How
shall they rid themselves of this
soul-damning inheritance which
has come to them without choice!
And on whom rests the awful re-
sponsibility and on whom shall fall
the righteous and crushing judg-
ment for transmitting to an limo
cent offspring the possibility and
the probability of disease and
drunkenness, debauchery an d
crime? And these are the sons to
whom clean fathers and mothers
are to- give their daughters in
marriage and yet liquor men won
der why their business is so siren
uously opposed.
We are told sometimes that in
the good old days when strong drink
flowed freely, when it was kept in
the farmers and in the mechanics
cellar, when in the harvest field it
was drunk as freely as water, that
in these o1den times there was less
drunkenness than there is today
with all the restrictions which legis.
1ation has thrown around the traffic,
But let US remember that this pres
ent generation is but reaping the
harvest of that awful and that reck-
less sowing. Shall there be anoth-
er generation like it? Does the
drunkard realize the hell of agony
he is preparing for his innocent,
helpless children by indulging his
| appetite for strong drink?