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in idiocy, in .another as epilepsy or hysteria, in another in 

 weakness of will, and in yet another or others in uncontrol- 

 lable alcoholic craving; some may escape in their own 

 persons, but only to hand down the heritage of their 

 parents' shame to others and succeeding generations. Dr. 

 Richardson has well said : "The solemnest fact of all 

 bearing upon the physical deteriorations, and upon the mental 

 aberrations produced by alcohol, is that the mischief inflicted 

 by it on man through his own act and deed cannot fail to be 

 transmitted to those who descend from him, and who are 

 thus irresponsibly afflicted. Amongst the many inscrutable 

 designs of nature, none is more manifest than this, that 

 physical vice, like physical feature and physical virtue, 

 descends in line. But not one of the transmitted wrongs, 

 physical or mental, is more certainly passed on to those 

 yet unborn than the wrongs which are inflicted by alcohol. 

 Many specific diseases engendered by it in the parent are 

 too often stamped in the child ; while the propensity to its 

 use descends also, making the evil interest compound in its 

 terrible totality." It is unnecessary for me to dilate upon 

 the many acute and chronic diseases caused directly and 

 indirectly by alcohol ; but the point on which I would 

 especially insist is that the protean pernicious effects of 

 alcohol taken in excess do not, unfortunately, end with the 

 miserable life of the poor drunkard, but are passed on to 

 his irresponsible children as a legacy from violated nature 

 an indelible brand, an inherited curse which may express 

 itself in a distinct neuropathic predisposition capable of 

 developing insanity, hysteria, epilepsy, impaired volition 

 or mental instability, and of reproducing the primary vice 

 in which it has originated. Of the real nature of this pre- 

 disposition we know nothing, beyond the probability that the 



