Alcohol and heredity: Theories about the effects of alcohol use on offspring

Abstract

Medical temperance writers throughout the nineteenth century and well into the first two decades of the twentieth century argued that alcohol use by parents caused hereditary disease in their offspring. In particular, it was believed that alcohol use was responsible for feeblemindedness, epilepsy, and various other nervous system disorders. In 1910, Karl Pearson and his associates at the Galton Eugenics Laboratory of the University of London published a statistical study seriously challenging the view that alcohol use was causally related to heritable disease in offspring. Although the study generated considerable controversy and had certain flaws by contemporary standards, the weight of the evidence was sufficient to discredit the theories of the medical temperance writers.