ALCOHOLISH ONE OF TWO CONTRIBUTING FACTORS IN MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

White Ribbon, Volume 33, Issue 398, 18 September 1928, Page 5

ALCOHOLISH ONE OF TWO CONTRIBUTING FACTORS IN MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

Dr. Coorge Wilson, writing in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger on mental deficiencies in children, gives ilrcholism in the parents as one of tlie causative factors in tlie producion of feeble-minded children, the oninion* st single cause, as lie says, being had heredity. Alcoholism was present in forty-six per cent, of the e,is.*s of one investigator. Dr. W ilson said: “Before the birth of a child, alcoholism in the mother has decidedly injurious conseriuonces to the ofl'Pring.” However, it is likely that the effect of alcohol is more often (ontributory than actual’ easual hi the production of mental d( ficiency. Br. W. C. Sullivan one** conducted an inquiry regarding the children of l-' 1 women, who were habitual drinkers, and who had no physical or heredi tary defects. Of these children. 335, which was fifty per cent, of the total number, either died in infancy or were still-born. Of the remaining forty five per cent, several were mentally defective and 4.1 per cent, were epileptics. The proportion nt epileptics in the general population I:- one tenth of one por cent.”