ALCOHOL, DISEASE, AND HEREDITARY DEFECTS 283 



tion of the women begin to drink practically at the earliest age at 

 which they can obtain access to alcohol, and the amount of mental 

 defect among those who have been drinking for many years is 

 only slightly greater than that among those who are at the begin- 

 ning of their alcoholic career. There is a close relationship be- 

 tween the intensity of alcoholism and the mental conditions of 

 the inebriates but no relationship with their physical condition. 

 All this lends support to the view that the mental defect of the 

 inebriate is not a gradual growth; it is bom, not bred; that ine- 

 briety is more an incident in the Hfe of the inebriate than the 

 cause of his mental defect." 



This conclusion which is coming to be quite widely adopted 

 receives strong support from the investigations of Stocker which 

 are described in his book on Alkoholpsy chosen} Stocker was a 

 physician in the psychopathic clinic at Erlangen, Germany, and 

 he endeavored to follow up the histories of the various cases of 

 alcoholic delirium that were confined in the institution. He 

 went into the homes of the patients wherever possible, got into 

 friendly relations mth their families, and obtained whatever 

 information he could regarding the early life of the patients and 

 especially any symptoms of disordered mentality they may have 

 manifested previous to their use of alcohol. At the same time he 

 informed himself as fully as possible concerning the ancestry and 

 other relatives of the person in question. Stocker was able to get 

 fairly complete data in regard to ninety of the hundred and fifteen 

 cases represented in the asylum. Thirty-four of these cases had 

 more or less regular fits of epilepsy, and in all but two of these the 

 author found epileptic symptoms before the patients started to 

 use alcohol in excess. In the vast majority of the remaining cases 

 including chronic alcoholic mania, dementia prascox and other 

 disorders there was a history of nervous or mental derangement 

 before the alcoholic habit was acquired. And in most cases also 

 there was a neurotic taint in the parents or other near relatives. 

 But the point that seems evident from the data is that these 

 victims of alcoholism were not so much deranged because they 



^G. Fischer, Jena, 1910. 



