28o THE TREND OF THE RACE 



do not know. And even if we admit that the proclivity to alco- 

 holism in these cases is inherited, it does not follow that the 

 inheritance of this proclivity is in any way the effect of alcohol. 



Barr in his work on Mental Defectives quotes Hippolyte Martin 

 to the effect that among one hundred and fifty insane epileptics, 

 eighty- three had a paternal history of intemperance, and he 

 states that in his (Barr's) own records "only fifteen of my two 

 hundred and fifty cases of imbecile epileptics had such a history." 

 Horsley and Sturge in their recent book on Alcohol and the Hmnan 

 Body say that " there is very strong evidence to show that paren- 

 tal alcoholism is one of the most frequent causes of epilepsy in 

 children." Of the two authorities cited in support of this conclu- 

 sion, one. Dr. W. C. Sullivan, found that out of two hundred and 

 nineteen children who had alcoholic mothers 4.1 per cent became 

 epileptic, whereas in the general population epilepsy occurs in 

 less than one-half per cent, — numbers two small to eliminate the 

 effect of mere chance. And besides, it was not taken into consid- 

 eration that both epilepsy and alcoholism may have resulted 

 from a nervous heredity. 



The other authority appealed to. Dr. Legrain, personally 

 followed up the descendants of two hundred and fifteen drunk- 

 ards and found that in their families epilepsy, insanity and other 

 nervous disorders were extremely common. Here again the same 

 uncertainty occurs. Is the alcohol the cause of the epilepsy and 

 insanity, or do constitutions with a proclivity to epilepsy and 

 insanity take most readily to alcohol? It may be that much of 

 the epilepsy and especially of the insanity was caused directly 

 by drink, and that the offspring of drinkers being more apt, for 

 various reasons, to drink, naturally exhibit a higher percentage 

 of nervous disorders. It is one thing to show that hereditary 

 nervous disorders are more common in stocks addicted to alcohol, 

 and quite a different thing to prove that alcohol is the cause of 

 these disorders when they appear in the next generation. 



Demme's results which are often alluded to are vitiated by the 

 fact that they are based on especially selected evidence. A com- 

 parison is made between the offspring of two drunkards and two 



