With these thoughts in mind, the question of the use of narcotics becomes one of great importance. There are few, if any, tobacco users who are anxious that their boys should early begin the use of the weed. But they do not realize the fact that in their own use of it they may have diminished the vital force of these boys, transmitting a tendency to disease, or perhaps an appetite for the tobacco itself, and not only will the boys feel the effects, but the girls as well. As the thought of men is turned in this direction, proofs are accumulating of the evil results to the children of tobacco-using parents. A prominent physician says: "I have never known an habitual tobacco user whose children did not have deranged nerves, and sometimes weak minds. Shattered nervous systems, for generations to come, may be the result of this indulgence. The children of tobacco-using parents frequently die with infantile paralysis. I have known two cases in which the crying of the baby could not be stopped until the tobacco-pipe was placed between its lips." Dr. Pidduck asserts that in no instance is the sin of the father more strikingly visited upon his children than the sin of tobacco using. "The enervation, the hypochondriasis, the hysteria, the insanity, the dwarfish deformities, the consumption, the suffering lives, and early deaths of the children of inveterate smokers bear ample testimony to the feebleness and unsoundness of the constitution transmitted by this pernicious habit." The effect of alcohol upon the child is equally marked, and from all sides comes the testimony that the degenerations do not stop with the individual, but pass on to succeeding generations. Sometimes the influence is seen in the stunting of the growth, both mentally and physically. Dr. Langden Downe reports several cases of this sort where the children had lived to be twenty-two years old and still remained infants, symmetrical in form, just able to stand beside a chair, utter a few monosyllabic sounds, and to be amused with toys. Dr. F. R. Lees, referring to the injury inflicted upon the liver by alcohol, says: "And recollect, whatever injury you inflict upon this organ, to your posterity the curse descends, and as is the father, so are the children." Dr. Kerr asserts that the effects of injury to the mind and body may not always show themselves in the drinker himself, yet it is doubtful if his children ever entirely escape the effects in one form or another. These effects may be manifest in insanity, or in a tendency to diseases of the stomach, liver, bowels, lungs, or other organs; or with a like love for alcoholic stimulants. Not only may the child be weak in body but also in intellect. It is the statement of a score of observant physicians that the children of intemperate parents are apt to be feeble in body and weak in mind.