While tuberculosis and gout represent instances in which, although the disease itself is not inherited yet the presence of the disease in the ascendants so affects the germinal material that the offspring is more susceptible to these particular diseases, much more common are the cases in which disease in the parents produces a defective offspring, the defect consisting in a general loss of resistance manifested in a variety of ways, but not necessarily repeating the diseased condition of the parent. In these cases the disease in the parents affects all the cells of the body including the germinal cells, and the defective qualities in the germ cells will affect the cells of the offspring which are derived from these. There is a tendency in these cases to the repetition in the offspring of the disease of the parents, because the particular form of the parental disease may have been due to or influenced by variation of structure. One of the best examples of affection of the offspring by diseased conditions of the parents produced by a toxic agent which directly or indirectly affects all the cells of the body is afforded by alcohol when used in excess. Since drunkenness has become a medical rather than a moral question, a great deal of reliable data has accumulated in regard to it as a factor in the heredity of disease. Grotjahn gives the following examples: Six families were investigated in which there were thirty-one children. In all these families the father and grandfather on the father's side were chronic alcoholics, and in certain of the families drunkenness prevailed in the more remote ancestors. The following was the fate of the children: eight died shortly after birth of general weakness, seven died of convulsions in the first month, three were malformed, three were idiotic, three were feeble-minded, three were dwarfs, three were epileptics, two were normal. In a second group of three families there were twenty children. The fathers were drunkards, but their immediate ancestors were free: four children died of general weakness, three of convulsions in the first month, two were feeble-minded, one was a dwarf, one was an epileptic, seven were normal. In a family in which both father and mother and their ancestors were drunkards there were six children: three died of convulsions within six months, one was an idiot, one a dwarf, and one an epileptic. For comparison there were taken from the same station in life ten families in which there was no drunkenness: three children died from general weakness, three from intestinal troubles, two of nervous affection, two were feeble-minded, two were malformed, fifty were normal. Legrain has studied on a larger scale the descendants of two hundred and fifteen families of drunkards in which there were eight hundred and nineteen children. One hundred and forty-five of these were insane, sixty-two were criminals, and one hundred and ninety-seven drunkards. Of course