190 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



narcotics. 1 The Registrar-General announces it as *26 per 

 cent, of the total number of deaths in England. But, in 

 this particular, his returns are worthless. For very obvious 

 reasons " alcoholism " is very seldom introduced into a 

 British death certificate. Physicians generally prefer to 

 mention the immediate cause of death cirrhosis of the 

 liver or kidney, or disease of the nervous or vascular system, 

 or what not. In Switzerland where the death certificate is 

 a secret official document handed by the medical attendant, 

 not to the friends of the deceased, but to the registrar, the 

 deaths directly due to alcohol are announced as 2*47 per 

 cent. that is nearly ten times as many as in England. Taken 

 in conjunction with deaths indirectly due to alcohol (from 

 cirrhosis, etc.) they are announced as 10 per cent. 2 that is 

 nearly fifty times as many. Even 10 per cent, hardly con- 

 veys an adequate idea of the truth. In many cases when 

 death has been accelerated by alcohol the medical attendant 

 can have no suspicion of the fact. It is notorious that 

 indulgence in alcohol weakens the general powers of resisting 

 disease and injury. The statistics of insurance and friendly 

 societies clearly demonstrate that abstainers on the average 

 live longer and have less sickness than non-abstainers. 

 British and Russian soldiers succumb to wounds more readily 

 than Afridis and Turks who are much more temperate. 

 Moreover, drunkards are frequently physically and mentally 

 unattractive to people of the opposite sex, who object from 

 prudential motives, as well, to marry them. They are often 

 sterile through ill-health. Male drunkards are apt to satisfy 

 their sexual cravings by intercourse with an unfortunate 

 class of women, who are often sterile because unfortunate, 

 and unfortunate because drunken. Owing to ill-treatment 

 the mortality among the children of drunkards, who tend to 

 inherit the parental predisposition, is high. 



316. Evidently therefore the elimination caused by alcohol 

 is immense greater even than that caused by tuberculosis. 

 Moreover, the elimination is stringently selective. If we 

 carefully analyze the motives which induce men to drink we 

 shall find that they are three in number. In the first place 

 men drink to satisfy thirst. When the percentage of water, 

 an organic constituent of their bodies, falls below the normal, 



1 A good deal of statistical evidence is given in my volume Alcoholism: 

 A Study of Heredity (London, Fisher Unwin), in which the whole 

 subject is more fully dealt with than is possible in the present work. 



2 From 10 to 10'15 per cent, of the total number of deaths. See 

 Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics. 



