Note 42 — Chapter X · The Nervous System.

According to the Annual Report of New York State Reformatory, for 1896, drunkenness among the inmates can be clearly traced to no less than 38 per cent of the fathers and mothers only. Drunkenness among the parents of 38 per cent of the prisoners in a reformatory of this kind is a high and a serious percentage. It shows that the demoralizing influence of drink is apt to destroy the future of the child as well as the character of the parent. “There is a marked tendency in nature to transmit all diseased conditions. Thus the children of consumptive parents are apt to be consumptive. But, of all agents, alcohol is the most potent in establishing a heredity that exhibits itself in the destruction of mind and body. There is not only a propensity transmitted, but an actual disease of the nervous system.”—Dr. Willard Parker.