Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention

by Henry Putnam Stearns

A consumptive parent may have children who are free from this particular form of diathesis, and yet at some period of life may be affected with insanity; or parents with an insane diathesis may have offspring who are tainted with scrofula, or phthisis.

Perhaps there are no habits or acquired tendencies which are more surely transmitted than that of dipsomania or alcoholism; nor are there any which are more difficult to eradicate when inherited, or acquired in early life.

This diathesis, however, is not always repeated in form, but frequently passes into other abnormal conditions. Sometimes it manifests itself in some of the forms of insanity; and again in uncontrollable passions, or cruelty, or in idiocy, or again in a failure of moral character, or in epilepsy.

One of the most marked cases which have come under my own observation, occurred in a family resident in K——. The grandfather and father both died prematurely from the effects of alcohol, and one of the children, a lad of seven years, had such a passion for liquor, that he would swallow at once half a tumbler of wine or whiskey unmixed with water, and could never be near alcohol in any of its forms without begging for it. This child, at that age, could not enunciate clearly enough to be understood by those not familiar with him, and had been unable to learn letters, though much care had been expended to effect it.

Gall refers to a similar case, in which both the father and grandfather had prematurely died as drunkards, and a little grandson, exhibited strong tendencies for alcohol when aged only five years.[12]

“Charles X——, son of an eccentric and intemperate father, manifested instincts of great cruelty from infancy. He was sent at an early age to various schools, but was expelled from them all. Being forced to enlist in the army, he sold his uniform for drink, and only escaped a sentence of death on the testimony of physicians, who declared that he was the victim of an irresistible appetite. He was placed under restraint, and died of general paralysis.

“A man of an excellent family of laboring people was early addicted to drink, and died of chronic alcoholism, leaving seven children. The first two of these died at an early age, of convulsions. The third became insane at twenty-two, and died an idiot. The fourth, after various attempts at suicide, fell into the lowest grade of idiocy. The fifth, of passionate and misanthropic temper, broke off all relations with his family. His sister suffers from nervous disorder, which chiefly takes the form of hysteria, with intermittent attacks of insanity. The seventh, a very intelligent workman, but of nervous temperament, freely gives expression to the gloomiest forebodings as to his intellectual future.”[13]

Dr. Morel, after having an opportunity of studying the subject in a very large number of cases observed among the “gamins” of Paris, came to the conclusion, that the effects of alcohol were of the most terrible nature, especially when used in boyhood and early manhood, not alone on those using it, but on their descendants; and that it became manifest in “physical, moral, and mental degenerations.”

Echeverria,[14] who has collected a large number of statistics on the subject, gives the following in reference to the histories of sixty-eight males and forty-seven females who had experienced alcoholism in some of its forms: The number of children born to these persons was four hundred and seventy-six: and of this total, twenty-three were still-born; one hundred and seven died from convulsions in infancy; thirty-seven died from other maladies; three committed suicide; ninety-six are epileptic; thirteen are congenital idiots; nineteen, maniacal or hypochondriacal; seven have general paralysis; five, locomotor ataxy; twenty-six, hysteria; twenty-three, paralysis; nine, chorea; seven, strabismus; three are deaf; and nineteen are scrofulous and crippled. Of these children, two hundred and five (205), or nearly fifty per cent., have exhibited drinking tendencies.

From the above statistics it appears that of all the nervous diatheses which may be inherited, there are none which are more invariable in their effects, or more surely disastrous to their unfortunate victims, than that of alcoholism.