:
"_First generation_: Immorality, depravity, excess in the use of
alcoholic liquors, moral debasement. _Second generation_: Hereditary
drunkenness, paroxysms of mania, general paralysis. _Third generation_:
Sobriety, hypochondria, melancholy, systematic ideas of being
persecuted, homicidal tendencies. _Fourth generation_: Intelligence
slightly developed, first accessions of mania at sixteen years of age,
stupidity, subsequent idiocy and probable extinction of family."
Dr. T.D. Crothers, in an analysis of the hundred cases of inebriety
received at the New York Inebriate Asylum, gives this result: "Inebriety
inherited direct from parents was traced in twenty-one cases. In eleven
of these the father drank alone, in six instances the mother drank, and
in four cases both parents drank.
"In thirty-three cases inebriety was traced to ancestors more remote, as
grandfather, grandmother, etc., etc., the collateral branches exhibiting
both inebriety and insanity. In some instances a whole generation had
been passed over, and the disorders of the grandparents appeared again.
"In twenty cases various neurosal disorders had been prominent in the
family and its branches, of which neuralgia, chorea, hysteria,
eccentricity, mania, epilepsy and inebriety, were most common.
"In some cases, a wonderful periodicity in the outbreak of these
disorders was manifested.
"For instance, in one family, for two generations, inebriety appeared in
seven out of twelve members, after they had passed forty, and ended
fatally within ten years. In another, hysteria, chorea, epilepsy and
mania, with drunkenness, came on soon after puberty, and seemed to
deflect to other disorders, or exhaust itself before middle life. This
occurred in eight out of fourteen, extending over two generations. In
another instance, the descendants of three generations, and many of the
collateral branches, developed inebriety, mental eccentricities, with
other disorders bordering on mania, at about thirty-five years of age.
In some cases this lasted only a few years, in others a lifetime."
And here let us say that in this matter of an inherited appetite there
is a difference of views with some who believe that appetite is never
transmitted but always acquired. This difference of view is more
apparent than real. It is not the drunkard's appetite that is
transmitted, but the bias or proclivity which renders the subject of
such an inherited tendency more susceptible to
|