86 Heredity. 



idiocy, and hallucination. Conversely, insanity in the parents may 

 become alcoholism in the descendants. This continual metamor- 

 phosis plainly shows how near passion comes to insanity, how 

 closely the successive generations are connected, and, consequently, 

 what a weight of responsibility rests on each individual. 'A 

 frequent effect of alcoholism,' says Dr. Magnus Huss, ' is partial or 

 total atrophy of the brain : the organ is reduced in volume, so that 

 it no longer fills the bony case. The consequence is a mental 

 degeneration, which in the progeny results in lunatics and idiots.' 



Gall speaks of a Russian family, in which the father and grand- 

 father had died prematurely, the victims of this taste for strong 

 drink. The grandson, at the age of five, manifested- the same 

 liking in the highest degree. 



Girou de Buzareingues knew several families in which the taste 

 for drink was transmitted by the mother. 



In our own times, Magnus Huss and Dr. Morel have collected 

 so many facts bearing on the heredity of alcoholism, we need only 

 select a few instances : 



A man belonging to the educated class, and charged with 

 important functions, succeeded for a long time in concealing his 

 alcoholic habits from the eyes of the public ; his family were the only 

 sufferers by it. He had five children, only one of whom lived to 

 maturity. Instincts of cruelty were manifested in this child, and 

 from an early age its sole delight was to torture animals in every 

 conceivable way. He was sent to school, but could not learn. 

 In the proportions of the head he presented the characters of 

 microcephalism, -and in the field of intellectual acquisition he could 

 only reach a certain low stage, beyond which further progress was 

 impossible. At the age of nineteen he had to be sent to an asylum 

 for the insane. 



Charles X , son of an eccentric and intemperate father, mani- 

 fested instincts of great cruelty from infancy. He was sent at an 

 early age to various schools, but was expelled from them all. Being 

 forced to enlist in the army, he sold his uniform for drink, and 

 only escaped a sentence of death on the testimony of physicians, 

 who declared that he was the victim of an irresistible appetite. 

 He was placed under restraint, and died of general paralysis. 

 A man of an excellent family of labouring people was early 



