278 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



both drink because they belong to a strain with a hereditary 

 weakness in this direction. The son may drink because of the 

 environment in which he was raised; he may have been given 

 liquor, as children of such parents often are, and early acquired a 

 taste for it; or he may have been thrown among associates who 

 would naturally lead him into the drinking habit. No amount of 

 data showing a correlation between the alcoholism of parents and 

 that of their offspring is sufficient, by itself, to prove anything 

 whatsoever in regard to heredity. But simple as this distinction 

 is, it is one that has been ignored by a multitude of writers. 

 Nothing is more common than to find statistics regarding the 

 appearance of alcoholism in successive generations adduced as a 

 sufficient proof of the hereditary effects of alcohol. One might 

 get the same kind of statistics about taking snuff, chewing to- 

 bacco or using bad grammar, but they would prove nothing in 

 respect to hereditary transmission. 



With these considerations in mind we may consider some of the 

 arguments adduced to show the hereditary influence of alcohol. 

 It is a conclusion supported by many statistics and among others 

 by the recent data of Elderton and Pearson, that the percentage 

 01 stillbirths and of deaths in early infancy is higher in the off- 

 spring of alcoholic than in those of non-alcoholic parents. There 

 are several possible causes of this. First, the injurious effect of 

 alcohol on the foetus. Second, the injurious effect of alcohol on 

 the health of the mother. Third, the relatively unfavorable 

 circumstances of the alcoholic's family. In London in 1903-04 

 over half the deaths from overlying occurred on Saturday and 

 Sunday nights. The curve for deaths from suffocation in Eng- 

 land is almost perfectly paralleled by the curve of arrests for 

 drunkenness. Fourth, alcoholic mothers are more frequently 

 unable to nurse their children, and, according to Bunge, infant 

 mortality in the first year of life is, in some places, six times as 

 high in children fed on cow's milk as among those that are breast 

 fed. Holt, a well-known authority, says that deaths of cow-fed 

 infants are three times as frequent as among children nursed by 

 their mothers. One reason, therefore, for the greater mortality of 



