, fatal brain diseases,
and actual imbecility.[42]

It is found that the long-continued habitual user of alcoholic drinks, the
man who is never intoxicated, but who will tell you that he has drunk
whiskey all his life without being harmed by it, is more likely to
transmit the evil effects to his children than the man who has occasional
drunken outbreaks with intervals of perfect sobriety between. By his
frequently repeated small drams he keeps his tissues constantly
"alcoholized" to such an extent that they are seldom free from some of the
more or less serious consequences. His children are born with organisms
which have received a certain bias from which they cannot escape; they are
freighted with some heredity, or predisposition to particular forms of
degeneration, to some morbid tendency, to an enfeebled constitution, to
various defective conditions of mind and body. Let the children of such a
man attempt to imitate the drinking habits of the father and they quickly
show the effects. Moderate drinking brings them down.

Among other consequences of an alcoholic inheritance which have been
traced by careful observers are: Morbid changes in the nerve centers,
consisting of inflammatory lesions, which vary according to the age in
which they occur; alcoholic insanity; congenital malformations; and a much
higher infant death rate, owing to lack of vitality, than among the
children of normal parents.

Where the alcoholic inheritance does not manifest itself in some definite
disease or disorder, it can still be traced in the limitations to be found
in the drinking man's descendants. They seem to reach a level from which
they cannot ascend, and where from slight causes they deteriorate. The
parents, by alcoholic poisoning, have lowered the race stock of vitality
beyond the power of ascent or possibility to rise above or overcome the
downward tendency.

Of course these effects of alcoholics differ widely according to the
degree of intoxication. Yet, we must not forget that the real nature of
inebriety is always the same. The end differs from the beginning only in
degree. He who would avoid a life of sorrow, disgrace, and shame must
carefully shun the very first glass of intoxicants.

299. Opium. Opium is a gum-like substance, the dried juice of the
unripe capsule of the poppy. The head of the plant is slit with fine
incisions, and the exuding white juice is collected. When it thickens and
is moulded in mass, it becomes da