THE DRINK PROBLEM i8i 



The use of wine at meals, defective nutrition, ungoverned 

 appetites and impulses, neglect of healthy body and brain 

 exercise, break out in the children in inebriety or some allied 

 disease with almost absolute certainty. It is our physical 

 sins and diseases of to-day that are preparing the ground for 

 all sorts of nerve diseases and inebriety in the next generation. 

 It is our failures, neglect, and weakness that are transmitted 

 in low vitality, defective power of resistance, and tendency 

 to disease, making every condition favorable for a short, de- 

 generate life and early death. 



The free will we urge these poor inebriates to exercise 

 only existed in their ancestors. They alone could have divert- 

 ed and changed the currents of health and made free will 

 possible in the children. The hereditary inebriate is born 

 into the world with a low power of vitality and states of central 

 brain exhaustion which are ever seeking relief; and alcohol, 

 by its narcotic action, supplies this demand. This impulse 

 to degeneration may pass down one or two generations before 

 appearing as inebriety again. 



No other disease is more positively transmitted than ine- 

 briety, either directly or indirectly, in some associated dis- 

 ease. A study of heredity reveals a most startling view of 

 the forces at our command to change and prevent the inebriety 

 of the future. In the good time coming, not far away, this 

 field will be occupied by practical scientists, and we shall be 

 able to break up this great polluted spring and stop the tide of 

 disease which follows. 



Another active factor more apparent and controllable in 

 the problem of inebriety is that of marriage. At present in- 

 discriminate marriages are largely influential in intensifying 

 and continuing this alcoholic stream. The assertion that 

 inebriety is bred and cultivated by indiscriminate marriages 

 can be proved in the experience of every community. Stock- 

 men, who have only the most selfish interests, act on an analo- 

 gous fact, and avoid raising defective stock by the selection of 

 the strongest and best t}^es for the continuation of the race. 

 Our neglect to recognize this great principle of nature is seen 

 in the common marriages of many persons who are literally 

 human wreckage and remnants of a race stock approaching 



