on the basis of alcoholic homes driving the children out into the streets. This was found to be markedly the case, the children of alcoholic parents spending much more of their spare time in the streets. An examination, however, of the vision and refraction of children with regard to the time they spent in-and out-of-doors, showed no clear and definite result, the children who spent the whole or most of their spare time in the streets having the most myopia and also most normal sight. It was not possible to assert that the outdoor life was better for the sight, or that the better sight of the offspring of alcoholic parentage was due to the greater time spent outdoors.
"(8) The frequency of diseases of the eye and eyelids, which might well be attributed to parental neglect, was found to have little, if any, relation to parental alcoholism.
"To sum up, then no marked relation has been found between the intelligence, physique or disease of the offspring and the parental alcoholism in any of the categories mentioned. On the whole the balance turns as often in favor of the alcoholic as of the non-alcoholic parentage. It is needless to say that we do not attribute this to the alcohol but to certain physical and possibly mental characters which appear to be associated with the tendency to alcohol."
Of the many criticisms made of this work, most are irrelevant to our present purpose, or have been satisfactorily met by the authors. It must be said, however, that as the children examined were all school children, the really degenerate offspring of alcoholics, if any such existed, would not have been found, because they would not have been admitted to the school. Further, it is not definitely known whether the parents' alcoholism dated from before or after the birth of the child examined. Then, the report did not exactly compare the offspring of drinkers and non-drinkers,