ALCOHOL, DISEASE, AND HEREDITARY DEFECTS 281 
sober parents. In the former there were 8 idiots, 13 epileptics, 2 
deaf mutes, 5 dwarfs, 3 physically deformed, 12 who died in in- 
fancy, 5 who became drunkards affected with chorea and epilepsy, 
and only nine who were entirely normal. The families of the nor- 
mal parents showed nothing extraordinary as might have been ex- 
pected. It is evident that, granting the drunkards’ families were 
typical of alcoholic parents, which it is absurd to suppose that 
they are, the relation would not prove the causative réle of 
alcohol in the production of the various pathological conditions 
that were found. 
Comparatively few writers have been alive to the alternative 
possibilities of interpretation in the statistics with which they 
were dealing. H. I. Berkely, for instance, in his Mental Diseases 
states positively that it is a well-recognized fact that drunken- 
ness is frequently responsible for the lowest form of congenital 
idiocy. As evidence of the hereditary effects of alcohol Horsley 
and Sturge quote the following from the report of the Royal 
Commission on the Feeble-Minded: “Examining out of many 
family histories one hundred and fifty cases of mental defect in 
which he was able to satisfy himself that he had collected historic 
data, Dr. Tredgold, physician to the Littleton Home for Defective 
Children, found in 46.5 per cent of the families a history of well- 
marked alcoholism; in 38.5 per cent of the cases combined with 
neuropathic inheritance.” In a study of the histories of two 
hundred and fifty feeble-minded children Dr. Potts found a his- 
tory of alcoholism in one hundred and four of them. Eighteen per 
cent had a history of tuberculosis in addition to alcoholism and 
11.87 per cent were both alcoholic and insane. ‘‘It is quite plain,” 
says Dr. Potts, “that in combination with other bad factors it 
[alcoholism] is a most unfavorable element, while maternal 
drinking, and drinking continued through more than one genera- 
tion are potent influences in mental degeneracy.” 
Both the conclusion of Dr. Potts and his attitude toward the 
problem are typical of the reasoning so commonly exhibited in the 
treatment of alcohol in relation to heredity. Apparently it did 
not occur to Dr. Potts, or to Horsley and Sturge that the facts 
