PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10886, 1 July 1899, Page 5

PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

_0» (Published by arrangement.) DR. REID EXPLODES ANOTHER FALLACY. There were lively times a few weeks ago at the meeting of the "Society for the Study of Inebriates,'' at their rooms in ChandOs street, Portland place. Dr. Archdale Reid gave an address upon, "The Temperance Fallacy," and teetotalers turned up in strong force to oppose him. Dr. Reid went for the advocates of teetotalism in no set terms,_ and struck out at them, with great vigour.' 1 Concerning the'theory of Sir W. B. Richardson and others as to the supposed influence of heredity with references to alcoholism, lie denounced it root and branch. As a simple matter of fact, there was no way by which acquired characteristics could be transmitted from I parents to children. ■ If there was highly .educated persons would transmit their own educational knowledge to their children andi save them the trouble, the often agony, of learning. Dr. Norman Kerr had asserted thai drunken parents were apt to have drunkfen children, and that the children became drunkards because their parents were too fodd of alcohol. Nothing could be from the truth. Children, drank, not because the parents did co, but because they inherited that inborn, constitution of mind which came from Nature, and not from the-mere accident of a liquor-lover being the direct father, or mother, which rendered the mere-act of drinking delightful to them, as if was delightful to tie parent. It was a fact that those nations which were known to have been always the alcohol-using nations were now the most sober peoples to be ' found; * and ihe stronger the drink the more musculalr and. bony the men.—Scotchmen and Norwegians to wit. On the other hand, all savages, who had no hereditary taint of or taste for alcohol, on introduction to it were so excessively drunken that, if afforded an< opportunity, they drank it until they poisoned themselves, and the race died out from the want of the necessary vigour foi reproduction. The whole history of nations afforded incontrovertiblo proof that drinkinp by the parent did not cause an increased delight in drink in the offspring. PROHIBITION ~AND INSANITY. Before the introduction of prohibition ir the -State of Maine, the daily average num ber of inmates of the State lunatic asylun was 75. In five years under prohibitior the daily average had increased to 167; ir ten "years to 248; in Iwcu'ty vnirs to 363: and 'in forty years to 649. This covers tin period between 1850 and 1891, during, tin last ten years of which the population o Maine increased by 1.87 per cent. only. Ii the year. 1892 the daily average number o lunatic asylum inmates was 685. This dis proportion between the increase of populatioj and lunacy is fearfully significant when i is remembered-}" how tho faddists reiterati the assertion that the adoption of prohibi tion will emuty the gaols and the lunatii asylums. Li iB6O the number of prisoner! per million of population in Maine peniten tiaries" and county gaols was 1062. In thi year 1890 this number had increased to 1221 and the double-barrelled assertion, like ai old fowling-piece after missing fire, unex pectsdly bursts. I*