Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the RemedyTowns, Charles Barnes
Science
Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy
Towns, Charles Barnes
Alcoholism; Opium abuse -- United States; Tobacco use
When injuries occur to the body,
such as broken legs or arms, there is a very wide difference in the
picture produced in those who have drunk to excess, and those who have
been sober. The shock produced in these instances is greater in the
weakened nervous system of the alcoholic, and among those who have
habitually taken alcohol there is a very great tendency after broken bones
to develop delirium tremens, and when this occurs in these patients, the
outlook is always very grave. A broken leg or arm does not bring with it
any such danger to those who have led sober lives. The process of recovery
from disease and accident, owing to the deteriorated nervous system and
the poisoned circulatory system, is much slower in alcoholics than in
others.
WEAK WILLS INHERITED
Unfortunately, the injury which alcohol does, and the processes of
deterioration which it sets on foot, do not end with the individual.
Alcohol poisons and injures the germ cells of both sexes, and the
offspring of those addicted to its use may inherit a weakened and injured
nervous system. The taste for alcohol, the craving, so called, is not
inherited. This idea that, because a man has an alcoholic father or
mother, he inherits the taste for alcohol, is a superstition that has been
used by the weak as an excuse both for overindulgence in alcohol, and as a
further excuse why no attempt should be made to check their indulgence.
What is inherited is a weak, unstable intellect and personality, prone to
excesses in all things, one that is weak-willed and weak in resistance to
temptation, and one more easily affected by alcohol than the ordinary
normal individual. There is also often inherited a lack of moral
perception and moral sense, causing the individual to do things which make
one doubt his sanity; yet he can not be called insane, but really wanders
in the border line between mad and bad, which is often worse than insanity
itself. Alcoholic inheritance does not stop at instability of the nervous
system or weakness of the personality, and one is rather staggered to
realize the high percentage of imbecile, epileptic and weak-minded
children that may be born to alcoholic parents. A detailed study of the
imbecile school-children throughout all Switzerland showed that fifty per
cent. of them were born in the days nine months after the periods of
greatest alcoholic indulgence, such as the New Year, the Carnival, and the
grape harvest, and that the births of the other half of the imbeciles were
evenly scattered through the remaining thirty-eight weeks of the year. It
has been shown that in France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland, from
twenty-eight to seventy per cent. of the epileptics in some of the
institutions were the descendants of alcoholics. Demme, in comparing the
results of the health and death rates between ten alcoholic families and
ten non-alcoholic families, found that in the alcoholic families out of
fifty-seven children, twenty-five were still-born or died in the first
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account