b INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 



Now the Eugenics Laboratory has recently obtained data 

 bearing on this point from two large Lancashire manu- 

 facturing towns in which a house-to-house visitation was 

 made at each birth, and where accordingly a fairly 

 random sample was made of the population of all classes. 

 In this case i6 % were notorious as drinkers, 66 % could 

 be classed as temperate, and i8 % the visitor could only 

 enter under the very doubtful heading of ' said to be 

 abstemious '. In the second town 39 % were described as 

 ' irregular and indifferent in their habits ' — a euphemism 

 in the vast majority of cases for drinking.^ Taking 

 this in relation with the Edinburgh fathers, of whom we 

 found 59 % drank, there is no evidence at all that a per- 

 centage of 25 to 30 among the parents of the feeble- 

 minded is beyond that provided by the parents of normal 

 children of the same class. Nor, if it were so, would that 

 be any logical evidence that feeble-mindedness was the 

 result of alcohol. We have quite substantial evidence that 

 feeble-mindedness is an hereditary character ; it is largely 

 interchangeable with general weakness of will. And this 

 weakness which appears in one member as alcolohism 

 can appear in another as mental defect. Mr. Keynes's 

 error is precisely that of the alienists who, finding alco- 

 holism associated with insanity, attribute the latter to the 

 former, whereas it is quite as probable that the general 

 want of mental balance produces the alcoholism. The 

 frequency of collateral alcoholists in stocks where insanity 

 occurs should be sufficient warning that the association of 

 alcoholism and insanity are not necessarily cause and effect. 

 But Mr. Keynes, having prejudged his problem, finds no 



' It must be remembered that these statistics are for all classes of 

 the community, and therefore will certainly give a lower percentage 

 of intemperate than those for the working classes alone. 



