MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 9 



mouths ? Brazenly they write that we assert that ' alcohol- 

 ism causes no appreciable detriment to the drunkard or his 

 children' {B.M. y., p. 72). 



Sir Victor Horsley, in his speech at the Temperance 

 Medical Breakfast in July, 1910, used the following words : 



' In spite of their general conclusion that probably the 

 children of alcoholic parentage were just as well as the 

 children of the moderate drinkers, they notwithstanding 

 came to the conclusion that these equally healthy children 

 died at a much earlier age than those of the abstainers. 

 Now I cannot understand how one particularly healthy 

 child can expire sooner than another' (A^. T. g., p. 143-4)- 



We endeavoured in the first edition of our first Memoir 

 to enlighten such ignorance by using the word surviving. 

 But we still appear to have failed to reach Sir Victor's 

 understanding. Let us suppose, merely as illustration, that 

 the children of both the sober and drinking groups to have 

 initially equal average health. The environment of the off- 

 spring of drinking parents will be harder. More children 

 will be, and actually are killed off, and these children will, 

 on the whole, be the weakest third of the child population. 

 A lesser destruction, also of the weaker element, takes 

 place among the sober ; accordingly among the survivors 

 of school age it would be quite possible for the children of 

 the drinkers to show a higher standard of health than the 

 children of the sober. It is a question of whether selection 

 or hard environment produces the greater influence on the 

 health. We worded our conclusion on this point as follows: 



' The source of this relation [fewer delicate children among 

 those of alcoholic parentage] may be sought in two direc- 

 tions ; the physically strongest in the community have 

 probably the greatest capacity and taste for alcohol. 

 Further, the higher death-rate of the children of alcoholic 

 parents probably leaves the fitter to survive ' (p. 31). 



To assert, as Sir Victor and Dr. Sturge do, that ' children 



