292 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



criminals he examined had a drunken parent, as 

 against 1 6 per cent, of normal persons." * 



Dr. Ernile Laurent, in his recent valuable work t 

 on the inmates of the prisons of Paris, asserts that 

 drunkenness, alone or combined with some other 

 neurotic condition, is to be found in the parents of 

 criminals almost always, and Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky, J 

 who has made careful investigation into the mental 

 and physical development of the prostitute, found an 

 alcoholic parentage in 82.66 per cent, of 150 women 

 of this class in St. Petersburg whose ancestry she was 

 able to follow. 



Of course it may be said that example and edu- 

 cation in the home of the drunkard may account for 

 much of the criminality occurring in the children of 

 drunken parents ; but, as Prosper Lucas says, in these 

 heritages of crime example and education are only 

 secondary and auxiliary causes, and the true first cause 

 is hereditary influence ; as education, example, and 

 compulsion would fail to make a musician, an orator, 

 or a mathematician in default of inherited capacity, so 

 they would fail to make a thief. 



As to the amount of insanity, phthisis, epilepsy, &c., 

 met with in parents and relatives of the criminal, the 

 evidence is almost as overpowering as that relating to 

 alcoholism. Dr. Virgilio states that 32 per cent, of 

 the whole criminal population of Italy have inherited 



* Havelock Ellis in "The Criminal," 



t " Les Habitues des Prisons de Paris," 1890. 



t " Etude Anthropomdtrique sur les Prostitutes et les Voleuses." 



Op. tic. 



