38Section IV.Magnan and
Fillassier.
the family and the race. State and country authorities will, with State-
controlled classes, more easily see justice done on all sides. This last
advantage will, naturally, only avail in those lands where the permission
to sell alcoholic liquors is vested in the local authorities. The progressive
class system will also give the State, the municipalities, and also private
labour organisations an opportunity to support those restaurants and inns
which supply nothing but pure and harmless liquors, and consumption will
undergo a slow and gradual change to the lightest drinks.
At the present time the lightest kinds of beer are too heavily taxed in
comparison with the heaviest kinds, and the latter in turn are too heavily
taxed in comparison with brandy. From the point of view of race-hygiene,
the fight must be directed especially against the fourth and most dangerous
class, namely, all kinds of brandy (prohibition or Ivan Bratt’s system),
as well as against the mixed wines, which are so often adulterated and
injurious.ALCOHOLISM AND DEGENERACY.
(Abstract.)
Statistics from the Central Bureau for the Management of the Insane of
Paris and the Department of the Seine from 1867 to 1912.
By M. Magnan,
Chief Physician to the Central Bureau, Member of the Academy of
Medicine,
And Dr. Fillassier.
From 1869 to 1912 the number of sick persons received at the Central
Bureau of the St. Anne Asylum has gone on steadily increasing : occasionally
signs of a falling off are noticed, quickly compensated by the number of
entries for the following years.
Among these patients a great number are driven to the asylum by the
abuse of alcoholic drinks. Some of these are simple alcoholics, i.e., those who
owe their insanity entirely to excessive drinking; the others make up the
numerous group of degenerates, who are for the most part descendants of
alcoholics, and on whom fall all the forms of physical, intellectual, and
moral degradation.
For these last, alcohol has been but the touch of the trigger which has
put in action their disposition towards insanity; the attack of mania, when
past, leaves revealed psychic troubles, which, but for the turning of the
balance by alcohol, would have remained in the latent condition, but which,
once developed, remain often for a much longer time; so we see the increase
