How Drunkards are Made by Hall's Journal of Health

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 20, 1879

How Drunkards are Made.

By Hall's Journal of Health

Drunkards are made in two ways—by habit or by inheritance; the latter is the more hopeless form, because the appetite is more remorseless, more unappeasable—it is in fact a part of the nature of the unfortunate. Three fourths of the idiotic children in a Massachusetts asylum were born of parents one or both of whom drank liquor. But if the father and mother were strictly temperate, yet during the nine months previous to the birth of the child the mother uses spirituous liquors for any cause, just in proportion as she does so the child will inherit the appetite for strong drink. But if the mother is strictly temperate during the whole time previous to the child's birth, yet, while she nurses it, drinks ale or beer, or porter, or spirits, "to make milk," or for any other cause, or gives the infant food or drink mixed with liquor, the child will be impregnated with the love of it. Thus it is that the surroundings of the mother, during gestation and nursing, impress upon the child its physical and moral character; hence the regeneration of the race must come from maternal influence; hence the hope of mankind for amelioration of the condition of society in the future, its improvement in the physical constitution, in mental vigor and moral power, are found in the proper education of our daughters for maternal and domestic duties, and a higher appreciation of their vast responsibilities in the directions above suggested. On the other hand man comes in for his share in the great work, as a father and husband, by giving his cordial co-operation to the same great end by all the means possible to him in labor, self-denial, and generous sympathies.