=Factors to Be Reckoned With in the Study of Alcoholism.--=In any thoroughgoing study of alcoholism in man many factors will have to be reckoned with. First of all there is the question of inherent lack of control. This is probably the principal thing inherited where heredity truly enters as a factor. That example and social environment are important factors in addition to or in place of heredity is clear, too, when we observe that often it is the boys only who take after a drunken father, for there is no evidence that the inherited tendency when it really exists is at all sex-linked. Again, in certain occupations carried on under unwholesome influences relief is frequently sought in alcoholic stimulants, and such custom may easily crystallize into habit. Furthermore, the accustoming young children to doses of alcohol, or the unborn young to alcohol through the body of a drunken mother, may be strongly contributory toward establishing inebriety in certain cases. As we have seen from an abundance of experimental data on animals, moreover, the nurture effects on germ-cells may result in the production of weakened offspring. Such offspring in the case of man are probably less able to withstand temptations of all kinds and hence readily succumb to the habit-forming effects of alcohol if once its use is begun. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that alcoholism in the father usually means poverty and the subsequent accompaniment of malnutrition and neglect of the children, and this in itself may not only account for poor development of the latter, but may also be strongly contributory toward establishing the habit of alcoholism in them. An inherent bias plus most of the other conditions just enumerated is the not unusual lot of the offspring of drunkards. =Venereal Diseases.--=There is yet another very considerable class of maritally unfit who in any conscientious discussion of unfitness for marriage or of racial improvement must be considered. I refer to those who are afflicted with the diseases which are inseparably associated with the so-called "social evil." To _gonorrhea_, one of the most prevalent of these diseases, more than one-fourth of our total one hundred and ten thousand blind in the United States are said to owe their affliction. Milder types of eye disease may also result from such infections. As much as eighty per cent., or some say practically all blindness in children born blind is caused by it, the infection occurring at the time of birth or within a few days thereafter. The terrible consequences of this disease to the innocent wife would alone make its discussion imperative.