MARRIAGE AND DRUNKENNESS. 123 



appreciably affect the children. But that way danger 

 lies. An act once done, whether good or evil, is 

 easier to repeat for having been done before. The 

 appetite for alcohol is only too easily cultivated, and 

 the man or woman who, through weakness or thought- 

 lessness, saturates his brain with it frequently, must 

 not be surprised if his sin be visited upon his children 

 as idiocy, epilepsy, or other grave nervous or physical 

 deformity. 



From the earliest times it has been known that 

 drunkenness is one of the most fruitful sources of 

 idiocy, and also of physical deformity and crime, in 

 the children. It will be remembered that it was the 

 drunkenness of Jupiter when Vulcan was conceived 

 to which was attributed the deformity of that god. 

 Dr. Howe, upon careful investigation, found that fifty 

 per cent, of all the idiots in the State of Massachusetts 

 examined by him were the children of intemperate 

 parents. Dr. Fletcher Beach sets down drunkenness, 

 either alone or associated with some other obliquity 

 of nature, as the cause of 25 per cent, of all the 

 idiocy received into the Darenth Asylum, and with 

 this estimate almost every other observer agrees. 

 When spoken of in this connection it is generally 

 chronic drunkenness that is meant, and certainly a 

 large part of the evil caused by the abuse of alcohol 

 arises from chronic or continued dissipation ; never- 

 theless it must be clearly understood that a single 

 debauch may result in the idiocy or deformity of 

 the child then conceived. Cases are quite common 



