Effects of Parents' Dissipated Habits Upon Their Children.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 201, 30 April 1887, Page 7

Effects of Parents' Dissipated Habits Upon Their Children.

In no class of people does heredity do a move disastrous work than in the descendants of drinkers, whether excessive or moderate. A morbid appetite for liquor in such cases, with the disadvantage of an inherited nerve degeneration, may manifest itself in many terrible forms. Among these many forms are the ordinary symptoms of intoxication in a person perfectly temperate. Dr. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., presents many such cases in a paper read before the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, and published in the " Alienist and Neurologist. " The first cases that attracted his attention were two boys, sons of drunkards, in the Hartford Deaf and Dumb Asylum, who had shown clear signs of intoxication from their birth. He was afterward surprised to find such cases not uncommon. In some persons the symptoms are present all the time, either appearing at birth or slowly developing with the growth of the child. Most of such cases show other marked indications of physical degeneration as idiocy, imbecility, or bodily deformity. In the second class of cases, almost any excitement is sufficient to bring on ar> attack. This class may include persons 01 average intellect, and even of genius. In them the neurotic (nerve) degeneration may, at a later date, end in imbecility or insanity. Afarmer, fifty-fouryearsold, a man of wealth and character, whose father was a drunkard, but who himself never used any kind of spirits, showed symptoms of intoxication after meeting with an accident from a runaway horse. At the funeral of a child some months later his family were greatly mortified at his silly language, staggering gait and other marked symptoms of intoxication. A year later a similar attack followed, the burning of some buildings on his farm. , There are similar cases in which the nerve degeneration is due to no heredity, but to early habits of intoxication. A noted temperance lecturer, a total abstainer^ for ten years or more, received, while lecturing, a despatch announcing the fatal illness of his daughter. He drank a -glass of water, became confused, staggered, and was led from the stage laughing and shouting in a maudlin way. He had drunk no spirits, but the audience supposed him intoxicated