The making a man drunk with alcohol "to remove great pain" is a treatment not used by reputable physicians: there are many correct medical methods of removing pain, but a big draught of whiskey is not one of them. Even in a case where a physician can not be found, it is usually questionable whether the effect of alcoholic intoxication would not be worse than the irritation of the pain; and if it were not, where is the line to be drawn? Some male and female old ladies can work up "great pain" from a colic. The bigger and stronger a man is, especially if he has never been ill before, the greater his "agony" when he is having a tooth filled. AUSTIN ÓMALLEY. {120} IX HEREDITY, PHYSICAL DISEASE, AND MORAL WEAKNESS Heredity is a very vexed question, with regard to which most varied opinions are held even by those apparently justified in having opinions, so that it is evident we are as yet only crossing the threshold of definite knowledge and are not near anything like the clear view that many people have imagined. The most striking proof of this inchoateness of scientific knowledge of heredity is the fact that within five years the work of a monk in Austria, done about forty years ago, which has lain utterly unrecognised ever since, has come to be accepted as the most striking bit of progress made--almost the only real scientific knowledge with regard to heredity that was acquired during the whole nineteenth century. Father Gregor Mendel's work [Footnote 2] was done with regard to the pea plants in his monastery garden, and it revolutionised all the supposedly scientific thinking with regard to heredity that has been current in biology for half a century. [Footnote 2: _See American Ecclesiastical Review_, Jan. 1904; Walsh, _A New Outlook in Heredity_. ] This serves very well to show how far in advance of observed facts theories of heredity have gone. There is undoubtedly a very significant influence exerted over life and its functions by the special powers that are transmitted by heredity. How far this influence extends, however, and how much it may be said to rule details of existence, of action and in human beings, that complex of elements we call character, is entirely a matter of conjecture, and the {121} belief in its extent, or limitation, depends absolutely on the tendency of the individual mind to accept or discredit certain theories in heredity which have had great vogue.