282 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
presented could be interpreted in any other light. All that is 
directly proven by the statistics is that alcoholism in parents is 
frequently correlated with various kinds of neuropathic traits in 
the children. How this correlation is to be explained the statistics 
do not tell us. It is quite possible that the correlation may be due 
to the fact that people whose heredity disposes them to idiocy, 
insanity and other nervous disorders are those in whom inebriety 
is most likely to develop. One might pile up volumes of statistics 
such as we have quoted without really establishing the fact that 
alcoholic habits are a cause of hereditary defect. The problem is 
not so simple as is commonly represented. In the first place we 
must eliminate the influence of the unfavorable environment 
under which the children of alcoholics are so frequently brought 
up, and this in most cases is no easy task. And then there is the 
further question of ascertaining whether the use of alcohol is the 
cause of degeneration or its effect, or whether both may not be 
the outcome of other factors. 
It will be instructive therefore to approach the subject from a 
different angle and enquire into the heredity of the victims of 
alcohol in order to find if they show any traces of nervous derange- 
ment which may have disposed them to the excessive use of drink. 
Dr. Branthwaite has furnished evidence that about two-thirds of 
the inmates of the Inebriate Reformatories of England and Wales 
were mentally defective. The data collected by Dr. Branthwaite 
together with other data obtained elsewhere have been subjected 
to a statistical investigation by Barrington, Pearson and Heron in 
their Preliminary Study of Extreme Alcoholism in Adults. A 
Second Study on the same subject based on additional material 
was published two years later by Heron. The general conclusion 
of these writers is that extreme alcoholism is a symptom of 
pathological inheritance. Victims of chronic alcoholism which is 
sufficiently severe to lead to segregation in a reformatory show, 
as a class, a relatively high degree of mental defect, emotional 
instability, and poor education. Heron remarks, in speaking of 
the female inebriates studied by him, although most of his state- 
ments apply equally well to the other sex, that ‘‘A large propor- 
