HOMICIDE AND SUICIDE. 281 



Most authorities consider chronic alcoholism as 

 the chief cause of crime; others, however, place 

 heredity first. Judge J. C. Parker, who has 

 doubtless sent more men to the gallows than any 

 other judge in America, says : "Three- fourths 

 of the homicides committed are attributable di- Alcohol versus 

 rectly, or indirectly, to the use of liquor." Many Hercdit y* 

 pages of like quotations might easily be compiled 

 from other eminent authorities. Such state- 

 ments, however, are in a sense misleading, for of 

 a large per cent of the cases attributable directly 

 to alcoholism, bad heredity was the primary cause. 



Mr. Strahan, who has given much attention 

 to the study of suicide and insanity, says : "We 

 know, as a fact, that there is no abnormal con- 

 stitutional state more commonly transmitted from 

 parent to child than this tendency to self destruc- Hereditary 

 tion, and the major part of the annual increase 5S" CI "? al . 

 of suicide, as well as other degenerate conditions, 

 is due directly to propagation. In support of 

 this assertion I would call attention to the fact 

 that while the general death rate of England 

 and Wales has fallen 16.4 per cent during the 

 past quarter of a century, a rise in some cases 

 of over 100 per cent has taken place in the 

 death rates from hereditary and degenerate dis- 

 eases." 



Among many cases given by Mr. Strahan to 

 substantiate this proposition he tells of an under- Oxford Student 

 graduate of Oxford who shot himself while in 

 his room. A fellow student who was with him 

 up to 12 o'clock on the night of which he killed 

 himself saw nothing strange in his manner. In 

 a letter addressed to his father he said : "The 



