THE ABNORMAL MAN. 



Inebriety 



Transmitted. 



Race 

 Degeneracy* 



coming from alcoholism can pass from father to 

 son, even to the third generation, and they become 

 worse if the use of alcohol is continued, until 

 they result in sterility." 



It is true that the descendants of alcoholics do 

 not always show an abnormal desire for liquor 

 as the principal hereditary effect ; not infrequently 

 the bad heredity is expressed in epilepsy, idiocy, 

 and criminality. Moral quotes a case in which 

 a father was alcoholic, the mother insane, and of 

 their five children one committed suicide, two 

 became convicts, one daughter was mad and the 

 other a semi-imbecile. Dr. Fletcher Beech records 

 that out of 430 cases of inebriety 31.6 per cent 

 bore idiotic offspring. 



Grenier, of Paris, says : "Alcohol is one of the 

 most active agents in the degeneracy of the races. 

 The indelible effects produced by heredity are not 

 to be remedied. Alcoholic descendants are often 

 inferior beings, a notable proportion coming 

 under the categories of idiots, imbeciles, and the 

 debilitated. The morbid influence of parents is 

 maximum when conception has taken place at 

 the time of drunkenness of one or both parties. 

 Those with hereditary alcoholism show a tend- 

 ency to excess; half of them become alcoholics; 

 a large number of cases of neurosis have their 

 principal cause in alcoholic antecedents. The 

 larger part of the sons of alcoholics have convul- 

 sions in early infancy. Epilepsy is almost char- 

 acteristic of the alcoholism of parents when it is 

 not a reproduction in them or when it is not an 

 index of a nervous disposition of the whole 

 family. The alcoholic delirium is more frequent 



