282 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



presented could be interpreted in any other light. All that is 

 directly proven by the statistics is that alcoholism in parents is 

 frequently correlated with various kinds of neuropathic traits in 

 the children. How this correlation is to be explained the statistics 

 do not tell us. It is quite possible that the correlation may be due 

 to the fact that people whose heredity disposes them to idiocy, 

 insanity and other nervous disorders are those in whom inebriety 

 is most likely to develop. One might pile up volumes of statistics 

 such as we have quoted without really establishing the fact that 

 alcoholic habits are a cause of hereditary defect. The problem is 

 not so simple as is commonly represented. In the first place we 

 must eliminate the influence of the unfavorable environment 

 under which the children of alcoholics are so frequently brought 

 up, and this in most cases is no easy task. And then there is the 

 further question of ascertaining whether the use of alcohol is the 

 cause of degeneration or its effect, or whether both may not be 

 the outcome of other factors. 



It will be instructive therefore to approach the subject from a 

 different angle and enquire into the heredity of the victims of 

 alcohol in order to find if they show any traces of nervous derange- 

 ment which may have disposed them to the excessive use of drink. 

 Dr. Branthwaite has furnished evidence that about two-thirds of 

 the inmates of the Inebriate Reformatories of England and Wales 

 were mentally defective. The data collected by Dr. Branthwaite 

 together with other data obtained elsewhere have been subjected 

 to a statistical investigation by Barrington, Pearson and Heron in 

 their Preliminary Study of Extreme Alcoholism in Adults. A 

 Second Study on the same subject based on additional material 

 was published two years later by Heron. The general conclusion 

 of these writers is that extreme alcoholism is a symptom of 

 pathological inheritance. Victims of chronic alcoholism which is 

 sufficiently severe to lead to segregation in a reformatory show, 

 as a class, a relatively high degree of mental defect, emotional 

 instability, and poor education. Heron remarks, in speaking of 

 the female inebriates studied by him, although most of his state- 

 ments apply equally well to the other sex, that "A large proper- 



