122 



THE NEXT GENERATION 



families where the grandfather as well as the parents used 

 alcohol. Here he found 26 imbecile children and 38 who 

 were lunatics, while every one of the others was defective 

 in one way or another. 



In Bern, Switzerland, Dr. Demme looked up the history 

 of ten families that drank and ten families that did not drink. 

 Study the record and see what happened to the next genera- 

 tion of those that drank. 



Record of Ten Drinking and Ten Abstaining Families 



Number ok 

 Children 



Died in 

 Infancy 



Idiotic, Epileptic, Deformed, 

 Serious Nervous Trouble 



Drinking families 

 Abstaining families 



57 

 6v 



36 

 6 



9 



5° 



With facts piling up in this way, investigators have kept 

 asking themselves just when and how the alcohol of the 

 fathers most affects the children. 



When Dr. Bezzola tried to answer this question he was 

 house physician in an institution for weak-minded children 

 in Switzerland. Here he noticed that almost always, when 

 weak-minded children were brought in to be cared for, some 

 one would say, " His father was a notorious drinker." To 

 see how much truth there was in this, Dr. Bezzola determined 

 to learn what the facts really were. 1 



He took the latest census report available (1 880-1 890) and 

 found that during those ten years 934,631 babies had been 

 born in Switzerland. He also found what the average number 

 of births was for each month of the year, and discovered 



1 See publication by Dr. D. Bezzola, printed in German : " Statistische 

 Untersuchungen iiber die Rolle des Alkohols bei der Entstehung des 

 originaren Schwachsinns." 



