Morgan County republican. (Versailles, Mo.) 1906-1914, 1907-08-22
Unto The Third and Fourth
Generation"

Zone can not be, with impunity, the
son of drunkard"--so says DR.. A. Jof-
froy, French physician, who writes on
alcohol and Alcoholism" in the RciHc
.Snicn!G7He paris, July l3) DR.. Jof-
froy's article reads in places like an old
fashioned temperance tract, but it is in
reality a pitless scientific statement OF
facts Diseases, the author points cut,
are OF two kinds, those that attack per-
sons in normal health. and those that
touch only those who are predisposed to
them, To create such morbid predisposi.
tions alcohol is einincntly suited, and in
this way it strikes down not only those
who abuse it, but their descendants,
often ceasing its ravages only when il
has obliterated whole family. We can
quote here only small part of what DR..
Jofroy says. First comes his division OF
diseases into two categories mentioned
above, We
"In the case Of some diseases (scarlet
fever, smallpox, plague, etc) the patho-
&c Nic agent produces the specific ma!a1y
in every one exposed to contagion, what
ever may have been his previous con-
dition Of health. But, on the other hand,
there is whole class of diseases that
attack only such as are predisposed. OF
one hundred infants fed in the same way,
one or two will become abnornally fat,
because, for example, the father had
gout or the mother diabetes.
But hereditary predisposirion exists
also with nervous diseases, and alcohol
ism is one Of the most effective means of
creating such predisposi,ion, as well as
of developing it where !, exists. To
have chorea or rheumatism, for instance,
one must have obese. nervous, alcoholic
parents, A man may be seized with
shaking palsy, following some violent
emotion . . . but heredity must be
present to facilitate the action, and alco-
nolism is generally found to be at the
bottom of this heredty."
In mental diseases, Dr. Joffroy goes on
to say, the role of heredity is greater
still. We may almost say that predis-
position is absolutely necessary for these.
The author rejects the classification
made by some authors who divide mental
diseases into those OF the normal and ab.
normal brain. The former, he thinks,
do not exist, diseased brain being al
ways abnormal. Even poisons that act
on the brain select those who are predls.
posed, aud this is eminently true OF alco
hol itself Predispositions (generally al.
coholic) determine the special form of
drunkenness and explain why wine makes
one man gay, another sad, another quar-
relsome. Likewise, hereditary predis-
position explains why alcoholism results,
with one man, in an ulcer Of the
stomach, with another in cirrhoss Of the
liver, with others in paralysis Of one or
another set of nerycs. The writer con
tinues:
"On epilepsy the action of alcohol is
quite clearly manifest sometimes sub
Iect plainly epileptic from infancy takes
TO drink at about twenty, with the result
that his attacks Increase in violence at
each excess; sometimes a man OF thirty
to forty years who has had only slight
seizures in childhood begins to have the
characteristic attacks, which disappear
or lesseu when he becomes abstinent.
"In order that may be clearly under
stood will repeat the definition that
have given elsewhere of incipient degen-
eracy; The totality of organic ress-
tsnce, create new morbid aptitudes and
make causes pathogenic when Of them.
selves they would be powerless to injure
a normal organism
And repeat again that, in the crea.
ton Of these new morbid aptitudes, this
hereditary predisposition, which domin-
ates almost all pathology, alcoholism
stands preemineut, doing more harm and
counting more victims than tuberculosis
Alcoholism, in fact, not only affects the
individual, but its effects are continued
to his descendants One can not be,
with impunity, the son of an alcoholic
Alcoholism begins with the father and
strikes down his children; and generally
It's action continues, until, in the fourth
or fifth generation, it has destroyed the
{ uily, But before this final result is
reached, the alcoholics and their de
scendants are, according to circumstan
ces, hurled into disease, madness, o.
: crime, filing onr hospitals, asylums, ant
jails, as have already said,
'Blind indeed are those who, ignor
! ant Of 'he dangers OF alcohol, see in |
only source Of reyenuew- The Liter
. airy Digest,