“MORE READILY BECOME DRUNKARDS,

“if they once commence to use intoxicating drinks, is also true.  But that such persons, or any others, have the slightest inherent or constitutional taste or any longing for intoxicants, until they have acquired such taste or longing by actual use, we find no reliable proof.  It is true that statistics appear to show that a larger proportion of the children of drunkards become themselves drunkards, than of children born of total abstainers.  And hence the conclusion has been drawn that such children INHERITED the constitutional tendency to inebriation.  But before we are justified in adopting such a conclusion, several other important facts must be ascertained.

“1st.  We must know whether the mother, while nursing, used more or less constantly some kind of alcoholic beverage, by which the alcohol might have impregnated the milk in her breasts and thereby made its early impression on the tastes and longings of the child.

“2d.  We must know whether the intemperate parents were in the habit of frequently giving alcoholic preparations to the children, either to relieve temporary ailments, or for the same reason that they drank it themselves.  I am constrained to say, that from my own observation, extending over a period of forty years, and a field by no means limited, I am satisfied that nineteen out of every twenty persons who have been regarded as HEREDITARY inebriates have simply ACQUIRED the disposition to drink by one or both of the methods just mentioned, after birth.”

The views here presented in no way lessen but really heighten the perils of moderate drinking.  It is affirmed that some persons inherit a greater degree of nervous and organic susceptibility than others, and are, in consequence, more readily affected by a given quantity of narcotic, anaesthetic or intoxicant; and that such “will more readily become drunkards if they commence to use intoxicating drinks."

Be the cause of this

INHERITED NERVOUS SUSCEPTIBILITY

what it may, and it is far more general than is to be inferred from the admission just quoted, the fact stands forth as a solemn warning of the peril every man encounters in even the most moderate use of alcohol.  Speaking of this matter, Dr. George M. Beard, who is not as sound on the liquor question as we could wish, says, in an article on the “Causes of the Recent Increase of Inebriety in America:”  “As a means of prevention, abstinence from the habit of drinking is to be enforced.  Such abstinence may not have been necessary for our fathers, but it is rendered necessary for a large body of the American people on account of our greater nervous susceptibility.  It is possible to drink without being an habitual drinker, as it is possible to take chloral or opium without forming the habit of taking these substances.  In certain countries and climates where the nervous