It is found that the long-continued habitual user of alcoholic drinks, the man who is never intoxicated, but who will tell you that he has drunk whiskey all his life without being harmed by it, is more likely to transmit the evil effects to his children than the man who has occasional drunken outbreaks with intervals of perfect sobriety between.  By his frequently repeated small drams he keeps his tissues constantly “alcoholized” to such an extent that they are seldom free from some of the more or less serious consequences.  His children are born with organisms which have received a certain bias from which they cannot escape; they are freighted with some heredity, or predisposition to particular forms of degeneration, to some morbid tendency, to an enfeebled constitution, to various defective conditions of mind and body.  Let the children of such a man attempt to imitate the drinking habits of the father and they quickly show the effects.  Moderate drinking brings them down.

Among other consequences of an alcoholic inheritance which have been traced by careful observers are:  Morbid changes in the nerve centers, consisting of inflammatory lesions, which vary according to the age in which they occur; alcoholic insanity; congenital malformations; and a much higher infant death rate, owing to lack of vitality, than among the children of normal parents.

Where the alcoholic inheritance does not manifest itself in some definite disease or disorder, it can still be traced in the limitations to be found in the drinking man’s descendants.  They seem to reach a level from which they cannot ascend, and where from slight causes they deteriorate.  The parents, by alcoholic poisoning, have lowered the race stock of vitality beyond the power of ascent or possibility to rise above or overcome the downward tendency.

Of course these effects of alcoholics differ widely according to the degree of intoxication.  Yet, we must not forget that the real nature of inebriety is always the same.  The end differs from the beginning only in degree.  He who would avoid a life of sorrow, disgrace, and shame must carefully shun the very first glass of intoxicants.

299.  Opium.  Opium is a gum-like substance, the dried juice of the unripe capsule of the poppy.  The head of the plant is slit with fine incisions, and the exuding white juice is collected.  When it thickens and is moulded in mass, it becomes dark with exposure. Morphine, a white powder, is a very condensed form of opiate; laudanum, an alcoholic solution of marked strength; and paregoric, a diluted and flavored form of alcoholic tincture.

300.  Poisonous Effects of Opium.  Some persons are drawn into the use of opium, solely for its narcotic and intoxicating influence.  Every early consent to its use involves a lurking pledge to repeat the poison, till soon strong cords of the intoxicant appetite bind the now yielding victim.

Opium thus used lays its benumbing hand upon the brain, the mind is befogged, thought and reasoning are impossible.  The secretions of the stomach are suspended, digestion is notably impaired, and the gastric nerves are so deadened that the body is rendered unconscious of its needs.