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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 8

Degeneracy of Type

Degeneracy of Type

in its members. The National Medical Association, at Detroit, expressed its sense upon this point by a resolution declaring in express terms that "the use of alcoholic liquors entails diseased appetites and enfeebled constitutions upon offspring." Sir H. Thompson, a practioner of European reputation, recognizing the same fact, says "I have no hesitation in attributing a very large proportion of some of the most dangerous and painful maladies which come under my notice to the ordinary and daily use of fermented drink, taken in the quantity conventional deemed moderate." And it is this Indus of disease which so often spreads itself through two or three generations of imbecility before it takes on final forms of madness. In brief, it is the mental leprosy of our people. In the Islands of the Sea the lepers are corralled apart and forbidden to propagate. With us, on the contrary, ardent encouragement to beget scorbutic children is state policy.

What has been advanced will have been said too little purpose if it fail to convince you, that in all the relations whom this liquor traffic bears to the State, it is altogether indefensible and should be prohibited. Whether viewed economically or politically or socially—whether as a matter of morals or of policy—in what guise sever it be seen there is no redeeming feature about it. Can it then be suppressed by the State, and if so, by what best method, are the questions which at once crave answer?