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.

    8/48 (page 6)
    6 ' ^ A REPLY TO CRITICISMS OF THE Edinburgh Report in every case where drinking was found in connexion with either parent it was stated, and this state¬ ment depended upon a very ample inquiry from police, em¬ ployers, schoolmasters, missions, district visitors, &c., who would certainly know whether drink was interfering with the welfare of the individual or of the home. Now Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Sturge say that this is the first and worst instance of our use of scientific terms. They further hint that we have gravely deceived the public into the belief that our Memoir is a scientific presentation of the subject. I submit that the only grave deception of the public that can arise is to assert that we have used words and reached conclusions of a wholly different sense from those we have ourselves adopted and clearly stated. Illustrations of such assertions I will now provide. On p. 73 of their criticisms they assert that in our opinion : ' Alcoholism causes no appreciable detriment to the drunkard or his children.' I think we may fairly ask who is deceiving the public when such a statement is thrust into our mouths. No such statement has ever been made by either Miss Elder- ton or myself. We object to the manner in which Sir Victor Horsley and Mr. Keynes use the words ' drunkard ' and ' drunken ', because they do not fully represent the alcohol using class as defined by us. Any one reading the above statement of Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Sturge would suppose that we had asserted that the home en¬ vironment of drinking parents was no detriment to the children. Yet what again did we actually write : 'Alcohol may thirdly be the source of evil to the children, not because of physical changes wrought in the parents, but because of economic and moral changes pro¬ duced in the home environment. Mental and moral