Alcoholism and Heredity

In the middle of last year Professor Karl Pearson and Miss Elderton published a memoir entitled "A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." Since that time a violent controversy has taken place in the Times, the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and elsewhere upon this matter. The controversy has covered so large an area and has been concerned to so great an extent with points of detail that the broad issue of chief interest to practical reformers has perhaps become somewhat obscured. That issue may, I conceive, be stated thus: "Would the introduction of a law leading to a diminution in the amount of parental alcoholism in any generation be likely to bring about an improvement in the physique and ability of the succeeding generation?" It is believed by some that this question can be answered in the negative as a result of statistical research into a comparative physique and ability of the descendants of alcoholic and non-alcoholic parents respectively in some carefully chosen district. This view is not, I should say, one which can fairly be imputed to Professor Pearson and Miss Elderton; and the paragraphs that follow are not intended as an attack on their work. My purpose is not to enter at this late stage into the controversy between these authors and their critics, but to examine directly the belief which I have formulated above.

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