The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-08-24
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE
INHERITANCE OF DRINK.

Suffer the little children to come
INTO Me-" said Our Lord, and spoke of
saa-depths- and of -millstones slrne
round the necks of those who injured
them. The sins 9E ti4S parents are
visited upon their children. Does this
fact sink solidly into the mind of the
alcohol drinker? There is always
danger of overestimating the force of
heredity in conditions that involve a
moral element, but it can safely be
held that the children of alcoholic
parents suffer physical and mental de-
terioration through the cOwardly SEN
suality of their parents. Let us prove
this statement. In France, Legrand
examined 250 alcoholic families, and
found that in three generations there
were 814 members theoretically
tainted. Of these 1877 were alcoholics,
322 weakminded or idiots, 161 still
born, 81 prematurely born, and 12l
died shortly after birth. That is, 496,
or 60 per cent of these children were
degenerates. In series of 1000
idiOtic or weak-minded children in
81 per cent had alcoholic parents; for
80 per cent of the remaining he could
get no history, but certainly many
were alcoholics. In Normandy
another Investigator found that from
SO to 60 per cent of the parents of the
idiots that he examined were alco-
holics. In Norway, from 1S25-35, fol-
lowing the free distillation of brandy,
drunkenness increased greatly, and the
number of idiots born was trebled. In
Switzerland, of 500 epileptics exam
ined between 1867, 367 were the chill
dren of alcoholics. A fact worthy Of
note is that, in the case of most of
these patients, the alcoholism was in
the grandparents generation, espe-
| cially on the mothers side. Another
physician compared the children of
! ten alcoholic families with the chill
dren of ten totally abstaining families.
Only II per cent of the children of
| the nOnalcoholic families were normal,
while of the total abstainers 80 per
cent were normal. These are appal-
ling figures. In the study of GAL in
sane cases in a New York hospital,
alcoholism was found to be the chief
| cause in 46 per cent, and the sole
cause of Is per cent of the cases. The
superintendent of a lunatic asylum in
Scotland reported recently that AZ per
cent of the male and IS per cent of
the female inmates are such through
drink. HyslOp, the superintendent of
| two great London asylums, thinks that
alcohol is the cause of so per cent Of
all the insanity that he sees DR..
Legrain, head of the Asylum of st.
Anne in Paris, reports in 1900 that 81
per cent of the men and % per cent
Of the women were alcoholics.
Mediate steadily on what the above
facts and figures mean; try to grasp
their awful significance. Listen to the
tapping of the crutches of the
crippled ones as they crawl across life.
See the pitiable army of unhuman
degenerates that crowd the asylums,
and try to measure the unutterable
| misery that it's presence entails. And
| remember, this misery and ruin all
| flows from beer and bottle. Is it
nothing to you that your fellOWman Is
degraded, that your fellowman dies?
Is it nothing to you that this foul
stream, the shame of the nations, is
running not only men and women in
| body and soul, but is flowing across
the cradles of our race, sitting and
| blighting life at it's very source?
Love thy neighbor," commanded
| Christ, the Leader and Lover of all
men. who is my neighbour" He was
asked. Swift and decisive came His
answer: Mankind is your neighbor."
What are you doing to help your
neighbor in this matter?
Rep. w. j. LockfnOfon, s. J.