386 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



It is stated that 60 per cent, of the crimes of violence are due to drink. 

 All these various activities which are due to alcohol tend to break up 

 homes, and indeed Cushny has stated that if alcohol were a new syn- 

 thetic drug imported from Germany and a few cases of alcoholism had 

 been discovered as resulting from it, there would be such an outcry 

 against it that it would be forever prohibited. A much more valuable 

 drug, cocaine, he says, has nearly come to this fate on account of a few 

 isolated cases in which the cocaine habit has been formed. The writer 

 is not a teetotaler, and yet he does not think that any one can listen to 

 an exposition of the effects of alcohol without being willing to join in 

 a movement for its entire prohibition, provided such a prohibition could 

 be really effective. The trouble, of course, with such movements has 

 been that prohibition has not in reality prohibited. * 



The English medical journals have of late contained several articles 

 regarding the relationship between alcohol and insanity, and also be- 

 tween alcohol and heredity. Dr. Mott, who is both a physician and a 

 pathologist, quotes from Dr. Branthwaite, that 62 per cent, of the 

 alcoholics committed to reformatories under the English Inebriates* 

 Act, are found to be insane or mentally defective. However, Dr. Mott is 

 very unwilling to believe that alcohol is the cause of insanity in any such 

 proportion. He attributes the statistics mentioned above to the marked 

 intolerance of the mentally defective for alcohol. Dr. Mott has made 

 many autopsies in connection with his service at the Charing Cross 

 Hospital and the Claybury Insane Asylum. In the general service of 

 the Charing Cross Hospital he has found cirrhosis of the liver in about 



7.7 per cent, out of a total of 1,099 adult autopsies, whereas at the Clay- 

 bury Insane Asylum, out of 1,271 adult autopsies he has found only 



1.8 per cent, of cirrhosis of the liver. In the asylum he has had only 

 one case of cirrhosis of the liver with ascites, and this person had been 

 convicted 400 times in the criminal courts before having been declared 

 insane. 



Among the hospital patients, on the contrary, there were many 

 cases of cirrhosis of the liver with ascites. Mott therefore comes to the 

 conclusion that a person who can drink to a condition of advanced cir- 

 rhosis of the liver has inherited an inborn stable mental organization. 

 Such individuals he finds may exhibit no previous mental symptoms 

 beyond a weakened will and a loss of moral sense. He says there can be 

 no doubt that neurasthenics, epileptics, imbeciles, degenerates and 

 potential lunatics possess marked intolerance for alcohol, and failure to 

 discriminate between what is hereditary and what is the result of alco- 

 holism has been the cause of much confusion. Those who are alcoholics 

 and show only weakened will-power and failing memory do not neces- 

 sarily become permanently insane. 



Hodge has given dogs alcohol from puppyhood to maturity in such 



