124 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



where a temporarily drtinken person has begotten an 

 idiot child. As Dr. Maudsley says, " Here, as else- 

 where in Nature, like produces like, and the parent 

 who makes himself a temporary lunatic or idiot by 

 his degrading vice, propagates his kind in procreation, 

 and entails on his children the curse of a most hope- 

 less fate." 



A striking illustration of the part played by drunken- 

 ness in the production of idiocy is to be found in 

 Norway. In that country, in 1825, the spirit duty 

 was removed, and, consequently, intemperance at once 

 began to increase alarmingly among the people. The 

 result or rather one of the results of this was, 

 that during the first ten years following this regrettable 

 event insanity increased among the Norwegians by 

 50 per cent. This was, perhaps, to be expected under 

 the circumstances, but no one anticipated that the 

 increase of congenital idiocy among the children born 

 during the same decennial period would amount, as 

 it did, to 1 50 per cent. 



Drunkenness is one of the greatest perhaps the 

 greatest agent of degeneration at work among the 

 human race, and to it must be attributed much of 

 the disease, crime, moral obliquity, and general de- 

 generacy, physical, mental, and moral, which we find 

 so common among the poorer classes in all large 

 centres of civilisation. The dire effects of this agent 

 of degeneration are to be found among almost every 

 people upon the face of the earth, and in some 

 countries they are simply appalling. In Sweden, for 



