MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM ^s 



But in now bringing to an end, so far as I am concerned, 

 the present controversy I should like to say a word or two 

 on the bearing of alcohol and the temperance movement on 

 national welfare. The first memoir on alcoholism by Miss 

 Elderton and myself was written wholly without bias and 

 without knowing until the final numerical reductions were 



Alcohol and the Human Body will give their judgement as to the value of 

 statistical material a moment's consideration (see our Second Study of the 

 Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring. 

 Dulau & Co., 1910). What the late Dr. Ashby actually thought of the value 

 of the case-papers prepared under his supervision is known to, but can now 

 hardly be proven by even his intimate friends; but Dr. Ashby was aware 

 that the schedules were being copied by Miss Dendy with a view to my 

 inquiry as to the possible sources of mental defect; and, when Miss Dendy 

 nearly gave up in despair the heavy labour of copying these case-papers, 

 it was he who persuaded her to persevere in her laborious task. Nobody 

 has asserted that 'he made himself responsible for their full accuracy'. 

 Does Sir Victor Horsley make himself responsible for the full accuracy of the 

 data collected by laymen which with no warning of the use of ' vague and 

 unscientific terms ' he cites from MacNichoU or Laitinen ? I have in my 

 possession hundreds of family histories, collected not by surgeons but by 

 medical men of every degree of distinction. In nearly all cases they have cited 

 the ' vague and unscientific terms ' used by the laymen from whom they 

 obtained their data. But the fact that they have done so does not invalidate 

 their material where used for scientific statistical purposes. It would be better 

 if the ailments of every member of a family, be they tuberculosis, epilepsy, 

 or alcoholism, could be diagnosed by one and the same medical man, but we 

 all know this to be in practice impossible — the medical man himself has to get 

 the family history in the bulk of cases through one or two living lay members 

 of the family. And after all in our present state of knowledge are medicine 

 and surgery such certain sciences that even professional diagnoses are not 

 liable to err? I know of a family in which for three generations its hereditary 

 weakness was recognized in ' vague and unscientific terms ' as something liable 

 to go wrong in the gall-bladder ; one most distinguished medical man diagnosed 

 a swelling in one member as cancer of the stomach, and persisted in it to 

 the death certificate, although all trace of the growth suddenly disappeared 

 a month before death ; a not less distinguished surgeon operated on a second 

 member for appendicitis — I believe he had difficulty in finding any appendix 

 at all to remove — and the patient was passing gall-stones before she was 

 up from bed after the operation. Neither of these gentlemen troubled them- 

 selves to inquire into the family history ; they were quite certain, and would 

 scorn, like Sir Victor, those ' vague and unscientific ' appreciations of the 

 layman, to which wiser and more prudent men give due — but not undue — 

 weight. 



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