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278 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
both drink because they belong to a strain with a hereditary 
weakness in this direction. The son may drink because of the 
environment in which he was raised; he may have been given 
liquor, as children of such parents often are, and early acquired a 
taste for it; or he may have been thrown among associates who 
would naturally lead him into the drinking habit. No amount of 
data showing a correlation between the alcoholism of parents and 
that of their offspring is sufficient, by itself, to prove anything 
whatsoever in regard to heredity. But simple as this distinction 
is, it is one that has been ignored by a multitude of writers. 
Nothing is more common than to find statistics regarding the 
appearance of alcoholism in successive generations adduced as a 
sufficient proof of the hereditary effects of alcohol. One might 
get the same kind of statistics about taking snuff, chewing to- 
bacco or using bad grammar, but they would prove nothing in 
respect to hereditary transmission. 
With these considerations in mind we may consider some of the 
arguments adduced to show the hereditary influence of alcohol. 
It is a conclusion supported by many statistics and among others 
by the recent data of Elderton and Pearson, that the percentage 
o1 stillbirths and of deaths in early infancy is higher in the off- 
spring of alcoholic than in those of non-alcoholic parents. There 
are several possible causes of this. First, the injurious effect of 
alcohol on the foetus. Second, the injurious effect of alcohol on 
the health of the mother. Third, the relatively unfavorable 
circumstances of the alcoholic’s family. In London in 1903-04 
over half the deaths from overlying occurred on Saturday and 
Sunday nights. The curve for deaths from suffocation in Eng- 
land is almost perfectly paralleled by the curve of arrests for 
drunkenness. Fourth, alcoholic mothers are more frequently 
unable to nurse their children, and, according to Bunge, infant 
mortality in the first year of life is, in some places, six times as 
high in children fed on cow’s milk as among those that are breast 
fed. Holt, a well-known authority, says that deaths of cow-fed 
infants are three times as frequent as among children nursed by 
their mothers. One reason, therefore, for the greater mortality of 
