"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, anæsthetic or intoxicant; and that such "will more readily become drunkards if they commence to use intoxicating drinks."
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