TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 20020, 10 November 1928, Page 13

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

[Published by Arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.] Tho doctrine that drunkenness' is transmitted to offspring is us old at least as Aristotle, for ho said: “A drunken woman brings forth children like unto herself ”; and Plutarch affirms: “One drunkard begets another.” ALCOHOL: ITS EFFECTS IN PROGENY. Though wo may bo able to estimate approximately the influences of drinking habits as the cause of vice, pauperism, crime, insanity, etc., yet, after all, wo can only reach an imperfect calculation of the waste of human energy and material; but it is utterly impossible to approximately estimate the moral as well as the physical evils produce*-'! by the drinking of alcohol. DISEASE TRANSMITTED THROUGH ALCOHOL. The park most overlooked, because least obvious, is the amount of tho disease, weakness, and imbecility that is transmitted front parents to their offspring by the use of alcoholics. Children frequently inherit the diseases of their parents, and where the inheritance does not take the form of absolute disease, it often appears _in defective mental or physical organisations or in feeble development, and such feebleness and defect predispose to drinking l.abiU as well as disease. drinking a crime against the RACE. Aside from tho expense resulting from the use of intoxicating drink, it is a crime of the deepest dye to encourage the present-day drinking customs ol a drug that destroys the minds of men and women, converting them into maniacs, and sinking them beneath the level of brutes. Society sows tho seed, and must reap a harvest, not only of insanity, but of idiocy, one of tho sins that is visited upon the children of alcohol consumers to tho third and fourth generation; for alcohol not only changes men and women of mind to demented beings, but contracts the vital nerve powers of the infant before it sees the light of day or breathes tho life giving oxygen. These unfortunate ante-natal victims of _ alcohol live but to embitter the lives of their parents, a plague and a mock to civilisation, and an impediment in the world’s progress to a higher, nobler, state of society and human advancement. ALCOHOL ENDANGERS POSTERITY. By habits of intemperance parents not "only degrade and ruin themselves, but transmit tho elements of like degradation and ruin to their posterity. Tho constitutions of tho children of drinking parents are often physically and mentally weak and lax; they are predisposed to crave .stimulants, often become drunkards, and transmit to their offspring, should they have any. still weaker mental organisations and more lax constitutions, and entail upon them liability to mental' and physical diseases and a predisposition to their own vices. MODERATE DRINKING CONDEMNED. The free use of intoxicating drinks, even if it docs not produce drunkenness, is often sufficient to produce a predisposition in children to_ intemperance and various diseases of body and mind; and a continuance of the cause will transmit from generation to generation feebleness, or imbecility of purpose, dullness of intellect, vicious habits, and deterioration of the race. “ This can bo soon in every race, in every country. There is no largo city but presents numerous illustrations and evidences of. tlio truth. The criminal and dangerous classes of every society are of this class, for tho vast majority of them are but feebly organised, mentally or physically.”—Dr Caldwell. HEREDITY AND ALCOHOL. The outstanding fact of all bearing upon the physical deterioration and upon the mental aberration produced by alcohol is that the mischiefs inflicted by it on man through his own act and deed cannot fail to bo transmitted to those who descend from him, and who are thus irresponsibly afflicted. Amongst tho many inscrutable designs of Nature none is metre manifest than this: that physical vice, like physical feature and physical virtue, descends in line. But not one of the transmitted wrongs, physical or mental, is more certainly passed on to those yet unborn than the wrongs that arc inflicted by alcohol. Many specific diseases engendered by it in tho parent are too often stamped in tho child; while tho pronensity to its use descends also, making tho evil interest compound in its terrible totality.—Dr Richardson. Gilbert Barling. F.R.C.S., Vice-Chancellor of Birmiiirdiam University, said: “I can say as emphatically as I can that to no one is alcohol a. necessity. . . . Why are people such fools as to continue taking alcohol? In acute disease or sudden injury the steady, constant drinker’s chances of recovery are diminished 5(1 per cent.” Reduced earning power, illness, death —all affect the homo life of a nation. Tho family drifts into districts where the surroundings adversely affect the life of the child. Much of the ill sowing must he reaped by the next generation. If drink-caused poverty and ill-bealtli were banished, more time and attention could bo given to the problems caused through misfortune, and much of the hopelessness of present work of the kind would bo removed, for many of those who were assisted to their normal place in the world would not return again and again because drink bad sapped their resolution and ambition to do better.