ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 197, 29 November 1910, Page 7

ALCOHOLOGY.

ECONOMY OF LIFE. (Published by Arrangement). Economy is not always saving; it is the right use of anything: the right rule for the house or business or the individual lifet. The old Book says: "There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more; and there is thatwithholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." So even with life; it may sometimes be necessary that life be spent, sacrificed, that benefit may come to the whole people. We want a numerous people but we also want a vigorous people.

ME. SEDDON'S MOTTO was "Keep the cradle full"; and because of late years there lias been a decline in the birth-rate many have looked round for remedies. There might, however, be another way of improving our population. If the birth-rate declines, then we see to it that all who are born are well born and also well preserved. If the death-rate, among infants especially, can be reduced to a greater extent that the birth-rate declines, then the country will be a gainer. The enquiry is as to how the quality of the new arrivals can be improved and also how they can be protected, provided for, and trained for useful citizenship. DRUNKARDS BEGET DRUNKARDS. So said Plutarch. So says modern science and research. Not only do they beget drunkards, but they also beget idiots, epileptics and imbeciles. Howe found that 145 out of 300 idiots were descendants of drunkards. Beech, in England, found in 430 idiots that 31.6 per cent, were children of alcoholics. Bournville, in Paris, found that out of 1000 idiotic epileptics and weak-minded children 471 had drunken fathers. Dahl, in Norway, found 50 to GO per cent, of'the idiotic children had either drunken fathers or mothers. And then—note this, lovers of alcohol!—Bezzola, in Switzerland, who studied carefully 70 cases of pronounced idiocy, that half of these were generated during the 14 weeks in which the Swiss hold their carousals with drinking. Dr. Clouston, of Edinburgh, says that "Alcoholic insanity is steadily going up." So on, the results of investigation in all lands goes to show that the drinking of the parents brings evil results to their offspring as well as to themselves. Plainly, "to keep the cradle full,'' it would be well to consider how we can introduce good, healthy infants into it and then preserve them when thev are there.

1 Dr. Saleeby, whose name is often before the public eye on questions of public health, gave a lecture recently on •'Parenthood and Race Culture/' in which he shows the injurious effects following the use of alcohol. To this he added a note stating that, on the most moderate reckoning, alcohol makes 124 widows and orphans every day in England and Wales, or 45,000 a year. Here are a few extracts bearing on this question: "Alcoholism strikes a man not only in his own own person, but also in his descendants." —Dr. Lunies, Paris. Dr. R. Jones, F.R.C.S., medical superintendent of Claybury Asvlum, says- "In regard to the effects of alcohol on descendants, anything which devitalises the parent unfavorably affects the offspring, and clinical experience supports this in the lowered height and impaired general physique of the issue of intemperate parents. It also records the fact that no less than 42 per cent, of all periodic inebriates relate a history of either drink, insanity or epilepsy in' their ancestors " Prof. C. Allbutt, M.D., F.R.C.P., says: "Drunkenness is now distinctly hereditary. It seems to me to be a very strong hereditary tendency to a special craving." This matter is now being taken up as" a special line of investigation by thoroughly competent men, and so far all points to the truism that like begets like, and that this is particularly so in the case of the alcoholic. Sometimes a generation is slipped over, but ultimately the lajv is carried out and "the sins of the fathers" affect their descendants "to the ' third and fourth generations." Here is the result of some of these enquiries so far: Airive found tuberculosis in 10 per cent, of drinkers' children, but only in 1.8 per cent, among the children of healthy parents. Only an insignificant number of drinkers' children are physically and mentally normal—l7.s per cent according to Learain (Paris), 0.4 per cent' according to Demme, and 11.7 per cent according to Demoor.