and in the discussion Dr. Welch raised the question as to whether there were not certain elements of fault in the technique. The technique, it happened, was suggested or directed by Dr. Flexner, who was then in Philadelphia, and was actually carried out by some one who had no conception as to the character of the research I was following; did not know that alcohol was being used; did not know that the blood was taken from a patient receiving alcohol; or when it was taken from a patient who was not receiving alcohol.

"... This discussion is designed not to loudly sing the praises of alcohol; it is intended to emphasize the point that he who utterly casts it aside deprives himself of a valuable tool at certain times; that he who uses it in excess does harm; but that he who prescribes it in proper form and in proper dose and at the proper time may consider alcohol one of his standard remedies just as he considers any other drug possessing activity capable of doing good."

THE BEARING OF ALCOHOL AND THE TEMPERANCE

MOVEMENT ON NATIONAL WELFARE

A few years ago the eminent English biologist, Doctor Karl Pearson, wrote his celebrated memoir in co-operation with Miss Elderton, "A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism," etc. Of course, in time it was fiercely attacked by the teetotalers, as it refuted their accepted theories on the relation of alcohol to heredity. Among the severest critics of Doctor Pearson were Sir Victor Horsley and Doctor Sturge. In reply, Dr. Pearson not only disposed of the assertions of his adversaries, but convicted them of imputing to him statements which he had never made and of misleading the public by twisting his arguments. Later on, further studies in this field only strengthened the stand Dr. Pearson and his co-laborer took in the first memoir.

After having annihilated Sir Victor Horsley, Dr. Pearson incidentally pays his respect to Dr. Saleeby, who is known also in this country as a prolific writer of the melodramatic kind on temperance questions. Since he appears to be accepted as an authority here, it is interesting to know that Dr. Pearson says this of him: "As a layman I always find the fertility of his imagination and the picturesque flow of his language most impressive; but they invariably seem to lack the convincing factors which arise from intimate study of any single subject."

In closing the memoir cited Dr. Pearson devotes some paragraphs to the subject on the bearing of alcohol and the temperance movement on national welfare, which follow:

"The first memoir on alcoholism by Miss Elderton and myself was written wholly without bias and without knowing until the final numerical reductions were made what was going to be the outcome. We had failed to find a marked influence of other environmental factors on the health and mental powers of the child, but we confidently expected to find it in the alcoholism of the parent. Why? Because we had been so repeatedly told it existed by authorities

we credited with a scientific training and a scientific instinct. We did not find it, but we found instead a perfectly appalling mass of fanaticism. We have aroused this fanaticism in a remarkable manner to every degree of invective, misstatement and extravagance of rhetoric. We discovered that not only a large part of the lay press, but of the medical press is not open to anything but a one-sided discussion on these matters-it is already in the hands of so-called temperance reforms. Then we studied those authorities whom we had assumed had given energy and time to a scientific investigation of alcohol and we found that the whole 'scientific' basis of the movement was worthless. The men who were demonstrating the evil to the offspring of alcohol-using parents were doing so in nine cases out of ten by statistics, which they had no more notion how to handle properly than boys in an elementary school.

"Whether we were right or whether we were wrong was relatively of little importance, compared with the national danger of a movement which has become immensely influential in press and on platform by claiming a scientific basis which it does not possess. The movement is by no means unlike the English Puritan movement of the seventeenth century. The country was then politically and religiously unsound, and the Puritan fanatic saw only one way to mend it. Extreme fanaticism led, as it always does, to reaction, and we had all the evils of the last two Stuarts. Only after years of extremes of both types did moderation in politics and religion get a chance. The bulk of the educated and thinking population of this country has not troubled itself about the temperance movement; it has become sober-not on account of any teaching-but owing first to a change of customs, secondly and chiefly to a change of occupations which has involved a corresponding change of tastes. Nine men out of ten of the middle classes in this country, if asked why they had given up the considerable consumption of alcohol of their fathers, to say nothing of the excessive use of alcohol of their grandfathers, would reply, and in most cases truly, that they found no pleasure in the habit. The change of taste-probably associated with a difference of foods. and occupations-has been far more influential in producing sobriety in the middle and professional classes than any active propagandism.

The result has been that the temperance movement has grown up largely outside the influence of the educated, critical, and scientific factors in our national life; its propagandism is in great part based on statements which, whether true or false, have never been properly tested from the standpoint of science. The educated, thinking man wants to know the truth about vaccination, inoculation, vivisection, and alcohol; he is ready to act on knowledge, but he is met at every turn by rhetoric, invective, and fanaticism, till he thoroughly distrusts 'anti's' of all types. This is a national disaster, for there may be some truth behind any of these causes, and, if there be not, there is possibility of much harm.

"I am not one of those who think there is no alcohol problem in this country. Had I thought so, I should not have devoted any of the limited energies and the slender funds of the laboratory under my control to the investigation of this subject.

"The general conclusions we have so far reached-and none of the criticism poured out on us in the least weakens my confidence in their general truth-are:

"(1) That if the population be divided into the sober and the drinking sections, there is no marked influence on the physique and mentality of the offspring produced by the alcoholism of the parents. The toxic action asserted to exist by Dr. Saleeby, Sir Victor Horsley, and Dr. MacNicholl has been grossly exaggerated for the purpose of propagandist effect.

"(2) The association of alcoholism with tuberculosis, epilepsy, insanity, mental defect, deformity, dwarfism, etc., in some stocks cannot for a moment be denied. The assumption, however, that every association is causation, is the rock upon which most of the pseudo-scientific work of temperance fanatics has been shipwrecked. A careful statistical examination has shown us that in cases of extreme alcoholism the insanity or mental defect as a rule antedates the alcoholism. Since writing the 'Second Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring,' two things have occurred to strengthen our position in this matter. The first is that we have been able to obtain a copy of the original of Demme's investigations cited by Horsley, Hodge, Basil Price, and Kirby, without giving any reference to the original. This shows at once that Demme selected his children

of drunkards, not by selecting drinking families, but by selecting children who came to the Jennersches Kinderspital on account of mental defect, wanting or imperfect development of speech, or imbecility or idiocy, and that when he found families in which such child-defect occurred he then inquired as to the alcoholism of their ancestry. Further, in a very large number of such cases, on his own showing, the child itself was, owing to the too early consumption of much alcohol, reduced to a condition approaching or actually epileptic. Demme's book, Ueber den Einfluss des Alkohols auf den Organismus des Kindes (Enke, Stuttgart, 1891), is written in a perfectly moderate and reasonable spirit. He draws the conclusion that alcoholic drinks should not form part of the daily nourishment of young children; he looks upon alcohol in the case of children as a useful drug to be administered under medical advice, and on quite a different footing to its use by adults.* I may take occasion to return to Demme's statistics in another place, but it is quite clear that those who have taken them out of their context, without stating the nature of Demme's selection, nor the lesson he himself has drawn from them, have committed from the standpoint of science a very grave offence, however much it may have profited their own propagandism.

"The second thing to which I have to refer is the appearance, since the publication of our memoir, of Dr. Wilhelm Stocker's book, Klinischer Beitrag zur Frage der Alkoholpsychosen (Fischer, Jena, 1910). The experience of this book essentially coincides. with that of the material collected by the Eugenics Laboratory: The abuse of alcohol is not the cause of mental defect and insanity, it is to be considered itself as the outcome of a diseased mental condition. Dr. Stocker writes as follows:

"In the majority of my cases the question is not, however, of simply psychically subnormal personalities, but of sick individuals

*"While the use of alcohol, especially in the form of wine or beer, shows itself to be beneficent, stimulating and enlivening to the mature organism, the adult, during hard mental or physical labor, it must be characterized as unsuitable and detrimental to the immature infantile organism when used habitually" P. 67. The italics are Demme's.

This quotation is particularly significant since the very Dr. Demme is constantly cited by prohibitionists to prove the influence of parental alcoholism upon the offspring.-Ed.