ALCOHOL, DISEASE, AND HEREDITARY DEFECTS 281 



sober parents. In the former there were 8 idiots, 13 epileptics, 2 

 deaf mutes, 5 dwarfs, 3 physically defonned, 12 who died in in- 

 fancy, 5 who became drunkards affected with chorea and epilepsy, 

 and only nine who were entirely normal. The families of the nor- 

 mal parents showed nothing extraordinary as might have been ex- 

 pected. It is evident that, granting the drunkards' families were 

 typical of alcoholic parents, which it is absurd to suppose that 

 they are, the relation would not prove the causative role of 

 alcohol in the production of the various pathological conditions 

 that were found. 



Comparatively few writers have been alive to the alternative 

 possibilities of interpretation in the statistics with which they 

 were dealing. H. I. Berkely, for instance, in his Mental Diseases 

 states positively that it is a well-recognized fact that drunken- 

 ness is frequently responsible for the lowest form of congenital 

 idiocy. As evidence of the hereditary effects of alcohol Horsley 

 and Sturge quote the following from the report of the Royal 

 Commission on the Feeble-Minded: "Examining out of many 

 family histories one hundred and fifty cases of mental defect in 

 which he was able to satisfy himself that he had collected historic 

 data, Dr. Tredgold, physician to the Littleton Home for Defective 

 Children, found in 46.5 per cent of the families a history of well- 

 marked alcoholism; in 38.5 per cent of the cases combined with 

 neuropathic inheritance." In a study of the histories of two 

 hundred and fifty feeble-minded children Dr. Potts found a his- 

 tory of alcoholism in one hundred and four of them. Eighteen per 

 cent had a history of tuberculosis in addition to alcoholism and 

 1 1 .87 per cent were both alcoholic and insane. " It is quite plain," 

 says Dr. Potts, ''that in combination with other bad factors it 

 [alcoholism] is a most unfavorable element, while maternal 

 drinking, and drinking continued through more than one genera- 

 tion are potent influences in mental degeneracy." 



Both the conclusion of Dr. Potts and his attitude toward the 

 problem are typical of the reasoning so commonly exhibited in the 

 treatment of alcohol in relation to heredity. Apparently it did 

 not occur to Dr. Potts, or to Horsley and Sturge that the facts 



