Begetting drunkards

C. C. H. Cook

St Chad's College, 18 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3RH, UK. E-mail: c.c.h.cook{at}durham.ac.uk

EDITED BY KIRIAKOS XENITIDIS and KHALIDA ISMAIL

In his editorial, David Ball (2004) suggests that Plutarch invites an environmental explanation for the intergenerational transmission of drunkenness in his work The Training of Children in AD 110.

Actually, the full quotation from this work is:

‘The advice which I am, in the next place, about to give, is, indeed, no other than what has been given by those who have undertaken this argument before me. You will ask me what is that? It is this: that no man keep company with his wife for issue's sake but when he is sober, having drunk either no wine, or at least not such a quantity as to distemper him; for they usually prove wine-bibbers and drunkards, whose parents begot them when they were drunk. Wherefore Diogenes said to a stripling somewhat crack-brained and half-witted: Surely, young man, your father begot you when he was drunk. Let this suffice to be spoken concerning the procreation of children; and let us pass thence to their education.’

This would seem to suggest that Plutarch, and others of that time, were concerned more about an adverse biological effect of alcohol on conception, rather than an environmental process of copying (or otherwise being influenced by) parental drinking behaviour.

REFERENCES

Ball, D. (2004) Genetic approaches to alcohol dependence. British Journal of Psychiatry, 185, 449 -451.[Free Full Text]

Plutarch (110) The Training of Children. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/plutarch-educational.html





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