88 
tain. If one asks directly many become offended. Some hesitate to speak 
of the “black sheep” in the family; and the black sheep themselves may 
magnify the failings of others. Often black sheep are not as black as 
painted. Without knowing the facts in the case, we should not be too 
severe on the man who drinks or the man who requires the use of tobacco 
for his well-being, as he believes. 
A large chart was shown of six generations since the original English 
immigrants, the relationship now consisting of several hundred, but only 
a few branches are more or less known. 
Here we are at once in the midst of things. There are all sorts of 
deteriorating factors, including narcomania. The alcohol problem crops out 
all over one-half of the chart. 
Some remember the days of “free whiskey” when everybody drank 
and when it was no disgrace to be drunk. Today there is a different senti- 
ment and one may well ask, Why does an apparently sensible man drink 
and drink to excess? Why does he drink to excess occasionally or not 
quite to excess at all times? To say a man drinks because he wants to is 
not a satisfactory reply. 
Many patent medicines are full of alcohol and their effect on the body 
is that of alcohol. Some men who are ashamed to go into a saloon, or to 
call for plain whiskey, use nostrums that are compelied to pay the whiskey 
tax. Such preparations are used because they give ease: the man or 
woman using them “feels better”. As in the case of plain alcohol, the dose 
must gradually be increased, or more frequently repeated, to get the de- 
sired effect, that of a sedative. 
Many of the subjective complaints of the men and women who use 
alcohol are similar to those of neurasthenics and hysterics, so called. 
Many complain of “fear, moods, depression, sleeplessness, restlessness, 
tremors, general weakness, tearing pains, anorexia, palpitation, ete.” Ac- 
cording to my observations many individuals who are regarded as neurotics 
or neuropathics are dust victims, and because narcotics give relief, they 
use them. <A study of the chart will show this. 
Red squares in the chart indicate a victim of narcomania. At times 
the habit of using alcohol or morphia or even aspirin was acquired through 
a doctor's prescription. Physicians nowadays are careful for whom they 
prescribe narcotics; they fear habit-forming drugs. Many physicians 
themselyes are said to be victims; long and irregular hours, loss of sleep. 
