DRUNKEN PARENTS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3747, 19 July 1883, Page 4

DRUNKEN PARENTS.

Lecturers on the vice of drunkenness Avill do woll to take some notes from the papers recently published in a short aerie* by Dr

Yio-oreux. The writer gives some terrible pictures of the pains and penalties inflicted upon the, drunkard himself by his excesses ; but, far from being content with these gloomy representations, he now goes on to attackhis victim in, perhaps, a more severe style, by threatening him Avith the evils entailed upon his offspring. Of the multitudinous diseases which by his conduct they j aro doomed to inherit, space fails to give us a complete list; but among them may be mentioned dropsy in the head, causing that part of the child to grow to extraordinary dimensions; epilepsy, deafness, and a variety of maniacal affections of the brain. Examples are then quoted to show by practical illustration the working of these principles. From them may bo culled the following pleasant little genealogical tables. A drunkard, whose case had been carefully considered by ono of the French doctors, is found by him to have had three sons, all of whom are alive. The eldest is a victim of periodical delirous attacks. The second from his youth up has been in a state of habitual atupor, and the third is a bom idiot. In an instance reported by another physician, a man who has long been under tacatment for delirium tremens has been married twice, and is the father of a family singulary numerous compared Avith those of most French married people. By his first Avife he had sixteen children, of Avhom fifteen died without attaining the age of one year, the cause of death being in each case "convulsions. The survivor of this family is a martyr to epileptic fits. By the second wife this very unsuitable husband had eight children, of Avhom seven Avere speedily carried off by the same disease Avhich Avas fatal to their half-brothers and sisters. Tho survh-or of this branch of the family is a victim of scrofula, so that of the twenty-four children only two emerged from 'infancy, and each of these is a mere burden to the community.—Globe.