Chapter 62

HEREDITARY EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, ETC.

Civilized life in its progress is accompanied by certain customs and habits which are detrimental to the individual health, and therefore to national health. The dress of women is not merely an unimportant matter, to be made the subject of sneers or jests. Fashions often create deformities, and are therefore worthy of most philosophic consideration, especially when we know that the effects of these deformities may be transmitted.

The tightly-compressed waist of the girl displaces her internal organs, weakens her digestion, and deprives her children of their rightful inheritance. They are born with lessened vitality, with diminished nerve power, and are less likely to live, or, living, are more liable not only to grow up physically weak, but also lacking in mental and moral stamina. This weakness may manifest itself in immoral tendencies, or in some form of inebriety. It is now recognized that alcoholism will produce nerve degeneration, but it is not so well understood that nerve degeneration may be a factor in producing inebriates from alcohol or other poisons.

Dr. Crothers says: "Hysteria, convulsions, unreasonable anger, excitement, depression, credulity, skepticism, most unusual emotionalism and faulty reasoning, are some of the signs of nerve degeneration," and adds that this central failure of nerve and brain power is often accompanied by a resulting alcohol or drug inebriety. That is, the weak and degenerate nerves crave a stimulant, and the weak will yield to the demand, and inebriety result. If this degeneration of nerve comes from the low vitality given by the mother, because of her unhealthful habits of dress and life, is it not wise that in her early womanhood she should know of this possibility, and guard against it through her care of herself?

She ought also to understand the effect of alcohol and other poisons in producing nerve degeneration in the individual, and its probability in his posterity.

George McMichaels says: "The hereditary nature of the abnormal condition of which inebriety is the outward sign is not understood, even by physicians, as it should be. It is still, I regret to say, looked upon as a vice acquired by the individual, the outcome of voluntary wrongdoing. In some few cases this may be true, but in the majority of instances inquiry into the family history will reveal the presence of an inherited taint, such families usually showing a neurotic condition. No position in the social or intellectual world is, or ever has been, entirely free from the tendency towards alcoholism, and a study of the family history of the great men who have fallen victims to alcohol will show that the cause has been identical with the case among the most obscure of mankind, viz.: That a degenerated nerve condition has been inherited which renders the sufferer specially susceptible to this and allied neuroses, such as epilepsy, idiocy and suicide. The inheritance of an unstable nervous system makes the individual easily affected by what I must call 'alcoholic surroundings.' In other words, the provocation to drink which would have no influence upon an ordinary, stable nervous organization, is sufficient to turn the neurotic into a confirmed drunkard."

As a young woman you hold great power over the race in yourself, and through your influence over others, especially over young men. Your influence, wisely used, may save more than one from a drunkard's fate, and to use it wisely you should be instructed as to the real character of alcohol and its effects on the system. I have not time to tell you in minutiae of the effects of alcohol, but I must take time to speak of the law of heredity in this respect.

Idiocy and inebriety are on the increase among civilized peoples. This startling fact should make us ask the reason.

T.D. Crothers, M.D., who is making a life study of inebriety, states that from 1870 to 1890 inebriety increased in proportion to the population over 100 per cent., and that a large proportion is the result of inebriety in one or both parents. It is a sad fact that many women, even of good social standing, are fond of alcoholic beverages. I saw a very bright, pretty young woman not long since, at a reception, refuse to take ice-cream or cake, but drink four glasses of punch, with many jests as to her fondness for the same, apparently without any glimmering of the thought that she was drinking to excess, although her flushed face and loudness of manner were proof of this to those who were witnesses. Many people have an idea that the finer drinks, such as wine and its various disguises, do not intoxicate, but in this they are mistaken. All alcoholics are intoxicating in just the degree that they contain alcohol. The exhilaration of wine is but the first step of intoxication, and that means always an accompanying lack of judgment, a lessening of the sense of propriety.

One young woman who, under ordinary circumstances, was most modest in deportment, drank at her wedding in response to the toasts to her health, and grew very jovial, until at last she danced a jig on the platform at the railway station amid the applause of her exhilarated friends, who had accompanied the young husband and wife to the train, as they started on their wedding-journey. What a sorrowful and undignified beginning to the duties of marriage!

There is no absolute safety for either man or woman except in total abstinence. The _debauche_ knows the effect of wine, and uses that knowledge to lead astray the young girl who, if herself, would find no charm in his blandishments, but who, after the wine supper, has no will to resist his advances.

A young husband exacted of his bride a promise that she would never take a glass of wine except in his company, and when asked the reason, replied that he knew that no woman's judgment was to be trusted after taking one glass of wine.

Another cause of inebriety in women is found in the patent medicines advertised as a panacea for all pain, which chemical analysis shows to be largely alcoholic. Many temperance women would be horrified to know that they are taking alcohol in varying quantity, from 6 to 47 per cent., in the bitters, tonics and restorative medicines they are using, many of which are especially advertised as "purely vegetable extracts, perfectly harmless, sustaining to the nervous system," etc.

The result of inebriety of parents in inflicting injury upon offspring has not been well understood in the past, but is becoming recognized. Dr. McMichael says:

"In every form of insanity the disease is more dangerous in the mother than in the father, as far as the next generation is concerned. This is a good and sufficient reason why the daughter of drunken parents, very often attractive to some men by reason of their excitable, vivacious, neurotic manner, should be carefully avoided by young men in search of wives. The man who marries the daughter of an inebriate not only endangers his own happiness, but runs the risk of entailing upon his children an inheritance of degradation and misery.

"No woman should marry a man who, even occasionally, drinks to excess. Further, the disposition of the sons of drunken parents ought to be investigated before any girl becomes engaged to one of them. This is one instance in which long engagements are not to be condemned, for, if the man has inherited the alcoholic craving, it may become known in time, and his _fiancee_ may be saved from the most terrible fate that I can think of--becoming the wife of a drunkard.

"One word more before I leave this aspect of the subject. As the majority of inebriates are sufferers from a disease which is partly the result of hereditary predisposition, it is foolish for any woman to marry a drunkard in the belief that she can reform him. If women would realize that alcoholism is a disease and not a vice, they would understand that, while the spirit which prompts their devotion and self-sacrifice is praiseworthy, yet the probability of its success is very remote. No doubt there are women who have made this experiment and who have managed to 'reform,' as it is called, confirmed inebriates; but such cases are by no means numerous. While it might not be right to attempt to interfere with any effort to benefit any representative of suffering humanity, it must be remembered that the fate of the next generation is at stake, and that unborn children certainly have rights, although we are very apt to disregard them. Admitting, then, that anyone is at liberty to risk everything, even life itself, to benefit another, nevertheless it cannot be said that anyone has a moral right to jeopardize the future of a family to satisfy any instinct or feeling of affection, however noble it may be. If what I have written is true, no woman is justified in marrying a drunkard."

The unstable nervous organization bequeathed by intemperate parents is like a sword of Damocles over the heads of their unfortunate children, and even moderate drinkers will not give vigorous bodies and strong wills to their descendants. One man boasted that he had used a bottle of wine daily for fifty years, and it had not injured him; but of his twelve children, six died in infancy, one was imbecile, one was insane, the rest were hysterical invalids.

And alcohol is not the only substance that inebriates. Opium, morphine, chloral, cocaine, and all drugs of a similar nature, are dangerous, and each not only inflicts its injury on the individual, but transmits its results to posterity in that nerve degeneration which renders the sufferer an easy victim to all forms of intoxication, and intoxication is nothing more nor less than poisoning. Opium and morphine are often prescribed by physicians, and the patient, experiencing the sudden relief from pain, and perhaps not knowing the danger of indulgence, resorts next time to the delightful pain-quieter on his own responsibility, and almost before he knows it the habit is formed, and the weak will that made the easy victim now makes the unwilling slave, loathing his chains, yet unable to break them; and these evil habits are, in their effects, transmitted.

Dr. Robertson says: "The part that heredity plays in all functional diseases or states of the nervous system is not to be misunderstood. It is safe to assert that no idiopathic case of insanity, chorea, hysteria, megrim, dipsomania, or moral insanity, can occur except by reason of inherited predisposition."

The evils of morphinism are even greater than those of alcoholism, and their transmission no less sure. Especially is there loss of moral power. Dr. Robertson says: "No matter how honorable, upright and conscientious a man's past life may have been, let him become thoroughly addicted to morphine, and I would not believe any statement he might make, either with reference to the use of the drug or on any other subject that concerned his habit. This extends further, and clouds his moral perceptions in all relations of life."

Dr. Brush says: "Cocaine is the only drug the effects of which are more dangerous and more slavish than the inhalation of the fumes of opium."

The danger in the fast life of this age is that we try to find something that will enable us to do our excessive undertakings with less feeling of fatigue. We fail to see in this that we are exhausting our reserve force, instead of adding to our store of force.

The _Popular Science News_ says that kola, cocoa, chocolate, coffee, tea, and similar substances make nervous work seem lighter, because they call out the reserve fund which should be most sacredly preserved, and the result is nervous bankruptcy. Understanding that nervous bankruptcy of the parent threatens the welfare of future generations through the law of heredity, we will surely hesitate to bring ourselves under the strain produced by the use of these substances.

The most dangerous habit of the present would almost seem to be the tobacco habit, because it is considered quite respectable and is therefore almost universal. Men who are prominent, not only as statesmen and business men, but also as moral leaders, smoke with no apparent recognition of the evils, and lads can often sanction their beginning of the habit by the fact that a certain pastor or Sunday-school superintendent is a smoker.

But science has not been idle in regard to the investigation of the effects of tobacco, and the discoveries made have been published, so that we are not now ignorant of the tobacco heart, or tobacco throat, or tobacco nerves, nor of the transmission of nerve degeneracy to the children of smokers.

Girls sometimes think it is a great joke to smoke cigarettes for fun, and some grow into the habit of smoking, but the injury is not lessened by the fact that the use of the cigarette was begun in jest, nor that the user is a woman.

In fact, the _Medical Times_ is quite inclined to assert that much of the neurasthenia, including a general disturbance of the digestive organs, now so common in that portion of the female sex who have ample means and leisure to indulge in any luxury agreeable to their taste, or which, for the time being, may contribute to their enjoyment, is due to narcotics.

During the Civil War we are told that 13 per cent. of all men examined were excluded as unfit for military service. We are now told that 31 per cent. are found to be unfit. Nearly one-third of the young men found physically incompetent to be soldiers! From what cause? Certainly tobacco must bear a large share of the blame.

Some years ago Major Houston, of the Naval School at Annapolis, made the statement that one-fifth of the boys who applied for admittance were rejected on account of heart disease, and that 90 per cent. of these had produced the heart difficulty by the use of tobacco.

Dr. Pidduch asserts that "the hysteria, the hypochondriasis, the consumption, the dwarfish deformities, the suffering lives and early deaths of the children of inveterate smokers, bear ample testimony to the feebleness of constitution which they have inherited."

Girls sometimes have the idea that a little wildness in a young man is rather to be admired. On one occasion a young woman left a church where she had heard a lecture on the evils of using tobacco, saying, as she went out, "I would not marry a young man if he did not smoke. I think it looks manly, and I don't want a husband who is not a man among men."

Years after, when her three babies died, one after the other, with infantile paralysis, because their father was an inveterate smoker, the habit did not seem to her altogether so admirable, and when she herself became a confirmed invalid, because compelled to breathe night and day a nicotine-poisoned atmosphere, she gave loud voice to her denunciation of the very habit which in her ignorant girlhood she had characterized as manly.