An attempt to correct some of the misstatements made by Sir Victor Horsley ... and Mary D. Sturge, M.D. in the criticisms of the Galton laboratory memoir: A first study of the influence of parental alcoholism, &c / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: An attempt to correct some of the misstatements made by Sir Victor Horsley ... and Mary D. Sturge, M.D. in the criticisms of the Galton laboratory memoir: A first study of the influence of parental alcoholism, &c / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/48 (page 9)
    MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 9 mouths ? Brazenly they write that we assert that ' alcohol¬ ism causes no appreciable detriment to the drunkard or his children ' (Д M. y., p. 7a). Sir Victor Horsley, in his speech at the Temperance Medical Breakfast in July, 19T0, used the following words : ' In spite of their general conclusion that probably the children of alcoholic parentage were just as well as the children of the moderate drinkers, they notwithstanding came to the conclusion that these equally healthy children died at a much earlier age than those of the abstainers. Now I cannot understand how one particularly healthy child can expire sooner than another ' (Л^. T. Q., p. 143-4). We endeavoured in the first edition of our first Memoir to enlighten such ignorance by using the word surviving. But we still appear to have failed to reach Sir Victor's understanding. Let us suppose, merely as illustration, that the children of both the sober and drinking groups to have initially equal average health. The environment of the off¬ spring of drinking parents will be harder. More children will be, and actually are killed off, and these children will, on the whole, be the weakest third of the child population. A lesser destruction, also of the weaker element, takes place among the sober ; accordingly among the survivors of school age it would be quite possible for the children of the drinkers to show a higher standard of health than the children of the sober. It is a question of whether selection or hard environment produces the greater inñuence on the health. We worded our conclusion on this point as follows: ' The source of this relation [fewer delicate children among those of alcoholic parentage] may be sought in two direc¬ tions ; the physically strongest in the conimunity have probably the greatest capacity and taste for alcohol. Further, the higher death-rate of the children of alcoholic parents probably leaves the fitter to survive ' (p. 31). To assert, as Sir Victor and Dr. Sturge do, that ' children