As I am writing this article, the latest report of the Craig Colony for Epileptics, at Sonyea, New York, chances to come to my desk. Glancing at the tables of statistics, I find that the superintendent, Dr. Spratling, reports a history of alcoholism in the parents of 313 out of 950 recent cases. More than 22 per cent. of these unfortunates are thus suffering from the mistakes of their parents. Nor does this by any means tell the whole story, for the report shows that 577 additional cases--more than 60 per cent, of the whole--suffer from "neuropathic heredity"; which means that their parents were themselves the victims of one or another of those neuroses that are peculiarly heritable, and that unquestionably tell, in a large number of cases, of alcoholic indulgence on the part of their progenitors. "Even to the third and fourth generation," said the wise Hebrew of old; and the laws of heredity have not changed since then. I cite the data from this report of the Epileptic Colony, not because its record is in any way exceptional, but because it is absolutely typical. The mental image that it brings up is precisely comparable to that which would arise were we to examine the life histories of the inmates of any institution whatever where dependent or delinquent children are cared for, be it idiot asylum, orphanage, hospital, or reformatory. The same picture, with the same insistent moral, would be before us could we visit a clinic where nervous diseases are treated; or--turning to the other end of the social scale--could we sit in the office of a fashionable specialist in nervous diseases and behold the succession of neurotics, epileptics, paralytics, and degenerates that come day by day under his observation. It is this picture, along with others which the preceding pages may in some measure have suggested, that comes to mind and will not readily be banished when one hears advocated "on physiological grounds" the regular use of alcoholic drinks, "in moderation." A vast number of the misguided individuals who were responsible for all this misery never did use alcohol except in what they believed to be strict "moderation"; and of those that did use it to excess, there were few indeed who could not have restricted their use of alcohol to moderate quantities, or have abandoned its use altogether, had not the drug itself made them its slaves by depriving them of all power of choice. Few men indeed are voluntary inebriates. _Alcohol and the "Moderate" Drinker_