i8o THOMAS D. CROTHERS 



the remedial efforts to check and prevent inebriety are based 

 on such theories. All physical agencies in the causation are 

 unrecognized, and nothing but the moral weakness and the 

 wicked impulses of the victim are supposed to be active causes. 

 Such are some of the facts which appear from a general study 

 of the drink problem of to-day. 



If we ascend above the conflict and agitation of the pres- 

 ent and lose sight of all such theories, a different view appears. 

 The drink army stretches away before us like a river, with a 

 resistless onward sweep beyond the uncertainties of himian 

 will and the feebleness of human effort. To understand this, 

 we must go back to the sources, to the springs and streams 

 and causative influences which have accumulated and united 

 in forming this drink current. This is done by a careful study 

 and grouping of the histories of a large number of cases. The 

 conclusions from such a study by many observers agree that 

 heredity is the most prominent cause and is present in over 

 eighty per cent of all inebriates. 



This heredity includes the degenerations which are trans- 

 mitted from consumptive, insane, idiotic, epileptic, hysterical, 

 and other nervous diseases, together with alcoholic and moder- 

 ate drinking ancestors. Inebriety may be the direct legacy 

 of any of these diseases, and especially from alcoholic and drug- 

 taking parents. If drunken children should not follow from 

 inebriate parents, some other of these allied forms of disease 

 is sure to appear, either in the first or second generation. The 

 drink craze is a symptom of physical degeneration and tendency 

 to early exhaustion, and a hint of the incapacity of the brain 

 to regulate and continue the vital processes along the lines 

 designed by nature. 



Parents who use alcohol are literally crippling their chil- 

 dren, lessening their vigor and the possibility of living natural 

 lives. Thus parents are literally trustees to receive and trans- 

 mit to the future the germ form and force. If they fail by 

 neglect or ignorance, they come into conflict with inexorable 

 laws which punish by pain, suffering, and extinction. This 

 army of inebriates are, to a large extent, the product and result 

 of the diseases of their ancestors — a reflection of the physical 

 and mental degeneration of the race that has passed away. 



