The dogma of human responsibility : more especially as it related to inebriety : being a paper read before the last annual meeting of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, and published in the September number of the Journal of Inebriety, 1877 / by the Rev. J. Willett.

  • Willett, J. (John), -1881.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dogma of human responsibility : more especially as it related to inebriety : being a paper read before the last annual meeting of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, and published in the September number of the Journal of Inebriety, 1877 / by the Rev. J. Willett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    intemperance are transmitted from parents to their offspring. Dr. W. A. S. Brown says: They reproduce their per- verted moral nature, as well as frames similar to those which have been enervated and ruined by indulgence. The genea- logical tree of some families presents successive generations of drunkards. Dr. George Burr, of Binghamton, observes that the evidence in favor of the hereditary transmission of inebriety is no less strong than that upon which the fact that mental disease is inherited is admitted. In one case intellectual mania or dementia is developed; in another dipsomania. The Downward Sliding Scale. The above-mentioned conditions represent a downward slid- ing scale, commencing at excessive indulgence in intoxicating liquors, and descending, step by step, unto the fourth gen- eration, until the dark, impenetrable gulf of extinction merci- fully blots out of existence forever this race of hereditary drunkards. Duringthe interval recurring from the first to the last generation the successive inheritors of this disease continue to live on and are divided up between the lunatic and inebriate asylums, the prisons, and the outside world. Some have passed over the line of demarcation, and the power of will having lapsed, they are no longer regarded as amenable to> law; others are, justly or unjustly, suffering the penalties due to crime. Comparatively a few, impressed with the conviction that they have lost the power of self-restraint, have sought refuge in inebriate institutions, but the vast'ma- jority of this class are continuing to struggle on against all odds in this world of probation. Here is a man who must either stop drinking or else he will shortly be stricken with paralysis. There is another man fast drifting into a con-