Report of the Committee of Heredity, April, 1901.

  • Society for the Study of Inebriety (Alcoholism and Drug Addiction). Committee on Heredity.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Committee of Heredity, April, 1901. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    14. Seeing that I deny the inborn tendency to inebriety it follows that I deny its heredity; races which have no experience of alcohol are per se not the most drunken. There is no evidence to prove that they are. Their acquired habits of drinking is the result of the continual and continued pouring into their midst of liquors with the most potent inebriating qualities. I approve of the latter half of this paragraph on the whole. GEO. K. POOLE, M.D., Surgeon-Major H.M.I.S. Comments by Dr. Laing Gordon. 8. I cannot agree that the capacity for resisting the temptation to drink to excess is of any importance in relation to heredity, seeing that as a rule men drink in proportion to their desires, (see g); surely it is the rule that man exercises his will, to satisfy, and not to oppose his desires. 12. While convinced of the truth of this important clause, I am of opinion that the Committee might have made research with advantage, to ascertain for itself further facts bearing upon this subject. 13. This is a vague clause and assumes much while proving nothing. There is no proof that nations are temperate as nations from any cause other than the survival of those with the least capacity for enjoying the sensations produced by indulgence in alcoholic drinks. I think that the meaning of some of the clauses might be made clearer by a revision of the construction. H. LAING GORDON. December, 18, igoo. Comments hy Dr. Archdall Reid. The report is true in the main, but it contains some clauses which rob the truth of its clearness and emphasis. As a result the report is defective both as a statement of fact and as a literary production, and to that extent will fail to carry conviction. At the end of paragraph 6 it is stated that the view that parental drinking injures the child was not strongly supported by any evidence tended to the Committee. By that is implied that some evidence was tendered. As a fact none was tendered which I could accept, there was nothing to indicate that the usual confusion between post and propter hoc had not once again occurred. On the other hand overwhelming evidence was tendered that parental drunken- ness does not injuriously affect the germs. Germinal changes are transmissible to remote descendants. If alcohol injuriously affected the germs, the effects would accumulate generation after generation till the race became extinct; no instance of such racial deterioration is discoverable. Paragraph 8 is true by itself but false when taken with the context. Read with the context it implies that resolute men with a desire for alcohol use, as a rule, their will power to control not to gratify their desires. The question is