Alcohol and Heredity by H. N. Sisco, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association

FromSigns of the Times, Prohibition Special

Alcohol and Heredity

By H. N. Sisco, M. D.

H. N. SISCO, M. D.

THE evils of alcoholism are apparent enough in the drinker himself, but often the children and even the children's children, though abstainers, must pay a heavier toll than the parents who indulge. The immutable laws of heredity here operate.

These paragraphs propose to discuss briefly alcoholism and heredity from the viewpoint of degeneracy, epilepsy, feeble-mindedness, and insanity.

Prof. J. G. Adami, a pathologist of world-wide reputation, from McGill University, Montreal, in the London Lancet of November 2, 1912, states that "intoxicants have a deleterious effect on the offspring," and that "they cause instability and imperfect development of the nervous system, showing itself in convulsions, epilepsy, imbecility, and insanity." As the years pass, evidence corroborating this testimony is constantly increasing.

DEGENERACY.

Dr. Stockard, of Cornell University, reporting in the Archives of Internal Medicine, October, 1912, shows that of thirty-two young born of alcoholized guinea pigs, twenty-five soon died; but that of seventeen young born of normal animals, all lived and were vigorous. What is true of animals in this case, proves to be true of men. Professor Laitinen, of Finland, declares that in 3,600 families studied, thirteen per cent of the children of abstainers died; twenty-three per cent of those from moderate drinking families died; and that thirty-two per cent of the children in heavy drinking families died. Professor Demme, of Switzerland, says that of fifty-seven children born of ten alcoholic families, ten were deformed, six idiotic, six choreic or epileptic, and twenty-five were born dead. Only seventeen were normal; while of the children of ten temperate families, eighty-eight per cent were normal. These facts are found in the report of the International Congress of Alcoholism, 1909.

EPILEPSY AND IDIOCY.

The following is quoted from McClure's Magazine, October, 1908: "In examining into the histories of 2,554 idiotic, epileptic, and weak-minded children in the institution at Bicetre, France, Bourneville found that forty-one per cent had alcoholic parents." In the same article, it is stated that at the Craig colony for epileptics at Sonyea, New York, 313 cases out of 960 had a history of alcoholism in the parents. The lesson from these facts cannot be ignored.

INSANITY.

Census Bulletin No. 119, compiling facts for the year 1910, shows that the rate of commitment to insane hospitals for a given number of inhabitants is, in the whole United States, sixty-six; in license states, seventy; and in prohibition states, forty-four. And since prohibition does not wholly prohibit where wet states border the dry, under absolute prohibition the figures would doubtless be more striking still. These reports certainly furnish food for thought.

DEFECTS TRANSMITTED.

Dr. H. H. Goddard, of the training school for feeble-minded, Vineland, New Jersey, writing in the Journal of Heredity, December, 1915, shows that of 337 cases investigated, the parents of about fifty per cent were feeble-minded or epileptic. Dr. M. W. Barr, the superintendent of a similar training school near Philadelphia, states, in the same journal, that of about four thousand cases studied, fifty-five per cent had a family history of idiocy. And what is here shown of epilepsy and feeble-mindedness is also true of insanity and degenerative diseases of the nervous system in general. They are conditions very frequently passed on by heredity. And, too, while many of these defective individuals are confined in institutions, probably a far greater number are at large in society, having defects of a lesser degree, it is true, but nevertheless equally potent to transmit to their children the major defects as well as the minor ones.

Alcohol, therefore, not only too often blights the life of the drinker, but is also notorious for exacting a heavy toll of misery from his offspring. Alcohol sets in motion a stream of degeneracy which, when once started, continues its destructive course even "to the third and fourth generation."