CHAPTER VI

“The view here taken places the primary roots of instinct in the constitutional activities of protoplasm and regards instinct in every stage of its evolution as action depending essentially upon organization. It places instinct before intelligence in order of development, and is thus in accord with the broad facts of the present distribution and relations of instinct and intelligence, instinct becoming more general as we descend the scale, while intelligence emerges to view more and more as we ascend to the higher orders of animal life. It relieves us of the great inconsistencies involved in the theory of instinct as “lapsed intelligence.” Instincts are universal among animals, and that can not be said of intelligence. It ill accords with any theory of evolution, or with known facts, to make instinct depend upon intelligence for its origin; for if that were so, we should expect to find the lowest animals free from instinct and possessed of pure intelligence. In the higher forms we should expect to see intelligence lapsing more and more into pure instinct. As a matter of fact, we see nothing of the kind. The lowest forms act by instinct so exclusively that we fail to get decided evidence of intelligence. In higher forms not a single case of intelligence lapsing into instinct is known. In forms that give indubitable evidence of intelligence we do not see conscious reflection crystallizing into instinct, but we do find instinct coming more and more under the sway of intelligence. In the human race instinctive actions characterize the life of the savage, while they fall more and more into the background in the more intellectual races.”

For further discussion of this field the reader is referred to an excellent chapter on “Are Acquired Habits Inherited?” in C. Lloyd Morgan’s book,Habit and Instinct.

Disease.—Perhaps in the realm of disease more than in any other has an interest in the inheritance of somatic acquirements been manifested. The problem arising here is not essentially different from other questions of inheritance but since it is a matter of such practical importance to man, we may well give it special attention. We have to deal simply with the old questions of what is constitutionally in the germ, what is acquired by the body, and lastly, whether the somatically acquired is inherited. While we all know in a general way what is meant by disease, especially if some specific disorder such as scarlet fever, malaria or tuberculosis is mentioned, an attempt to give an accurate definition is much like trying to define a weed, inasmuch as what is functionally all right at one time or place may be all wrong at another, or what is normal in one animal may be abnormal in another. In general we may say that disease is derangement or failure of physiological function.

Reappearance of a Disorder in Successive Generations Not Necessarily Inheritance.—In attempting to study the inheritance of diseases we must recognize clearly at the outset that reappearance of a disease in successive generations by no means necessarily signifies inheritance. Before it can be pronounced such we must make sure that it is not a case of reimpressing similar modifications on the individuals of successive generations. For example, in England thereis a well-recognized condition known as collier’s lung which results from constant working in coal mines. And while both father and son may exhibit it, because of their similar occupations, there is nothing hereditary about the malady. Likewise there is what is known as emery grinder’s lung, and practically every large manufacturing city with soot-laden atmosphere leaves its impress on the lungs of the inhabitants. This will occur, of course, generation after generation, as long as such pollutions of the atmosphere continue to exist. It is clear that any unhealthy occupation is likely to cause the reappearance of an associated typical disease generation after generation as long as the children follow the calling of their parents. The common misconception that deformities or postures associated with a trade, such as a shoemaker’s or tailor’s, is genetically stamped on offspring by the end of the third or fourth generation results from failure to discriminate between real inheritance and mere reappearances under similar conditions of environment.

Prenatal Infection Not Inheritance.—Again, we must recognize that prenatal infection is not inheritance. We have already seen that the young mammal undergoes a certain period of intra-maternal development, but influences operating on it during this period of gestation must be reckoned with as environmental, not germinal. For example, it is said that an unborn child may take smallpox from its mother but this and all similar occurrences are cases of contagion. We find the great pathologist, Virchow, who with many others of his time was a believer in the inheritance of acquired characters, saying neverthelessregarding such instances that, “What operates on the germ after the fusion of the sex-nuclei, modifying the embryo, or even inducing an actual deviation in the development, can not be spoken of as inherited. It belongs to the category of early acquired deviations which are therefore frequently congenital.”

Inheritance of a Predisposition Not Inheritance of a Disease.—We must discriminate sharply also between the inheritance of a predisposition and the inheritance of a disease itself.

We often hear the statement made that tuberculosis is inherited and have cited in evidence certain consumptive families or strains. But tuberculosis is a bacterial disease and children of tuberculous parents are never born with the disease except in the rarest of instances.

Tuberculosis.—What is really inherited is a constitutional susceptibility to this particular germ. While almost any individual may contract tuberculosis when in a state of depressed vitality, or under stress of adverse surroundings, there is no doubt that certain families are more easily infected than others and much less resistant to the ravages of the disease when once it gains a foothold. However, a predisposition is a vastly different thing from the inheritance of the actual disease. For just as we are born with a nose well adapted to eye-glasses but not with eye-glasses on our nose, so many of us are born tuberculizable though not tuberculous, and every sanitary advance we make toward lessening the chances of infection is just so much more insurance for the susceptible.

The whole problem of tuberculosis is an extremelycomplex one. We do not know just the measure of the inheritance of the predisposition. Some writers in the past have maintained that tuberculosis is mainly a question of infection and not of inherent susceptibility, but steadily increasing evidence all points the other way.

Where the predisposition exists the chances of infection are still, even under the conditions of present-day sanitation, very great. The close association between a consumptive and other members of the family through a prolonged period of time, of course, renders the latter likely to infection unless unusual care is exercised. Very often where a parent is consumptive a child contracts the malady shortly after birth and is particularly likely to do so if the mother, who nurses it and cares for it most intimately, is the tubercular member of the family. Where the mother is tubercular, indeed, the probabilities are that the child has already before birth had its vitality lowered through the toxins circulating in her blood or through defective nutrition, and in consequence does not resist well any diseases.

Undoubtedly a large proportion of our infant mortality is of tubercular origin. It is now a well-established fact that much tuberculosis in children is attributable to drinking milk from tuberculous cows, yet we find individuals so uninformed and dairymen so mercenary that they fight all attempts of the commonwealth to test out cattle for tuberculosis so as to condemn the infected individuals and thus save our babies. Recent investigations made in some of our large pork-packing establishments also indicate thathogs, especially such as have been around tubercular cattle, are often shot through and through with tuberculosis and that such flesh when used as food, if not thoroughly cooked, may become a serious menace to our health.

With the wide prevalence of bovine and human tuberculosis it is little wonder that nearly every human being becomes more or less infected at some period of life. Autopsies on large numbers of individuals in some of our great hospitals have shown that as many as ninety-nine per cent. of the subjects show tubercular lesions of some kind. While it is true that the class of people who would come to autopsy in such public hospitals would perhaps be more likely to be tubercular than the average of the community, still it can not be denied that a very large degree of infection exists. Pearson, from statistics gathered in Europe, has shown that about eighty to ninety per cent. of the population have tubercular lesions before the age of eighteen. Hamburger found that in Vienna ninety-five per cent. of the children of the poor, between twelve and thirteen years of age, were infected with tubercular bacilli and he estimates that all would be before maturity. According to Doctor Mott, pathologist to the London County Asylums, the insane between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are about fifteen times as likely to acquire tuberculosis as the sane are.

Yet the mortality from tuberculosis, great though it be, is obviously not in proportion to the enormous degree of infection. The crux of the situation is mainly the matter of resistance. From the standpoint ofheredity, therefore, the question largely resolves itself into one of the inheritance or non-inheritance of constitutional resistance. Some are predisposed to be non-resistant and hence succumb.

The work of Karl Pearson[5]and other recent researches forcibly indicate that hereditary constitutional predisposition is one of the chief factors concerned in subjects who develop well defined attacks of the disease. Yet we must not forget that there are degrees of susceptibility and that therefore a constitutional predisposition which might be of little significance under good average conditions of nutrition and sanitation might be insufficient under unfavorable conditions.

Before we can make any relatively accurate estimate of the exact degree to which the malady is based on inheritance we must have more data. Many difficulties beset the path of the investigator. In the first place, when one gets back a generation or two he finds that diagnosis was crude and uncertain; a given malady may or may not have been tuberculosis. The main error however was probably on the side of not recognizing it in mild or obscure cases. Then again the questions of virulence of the infection, of size and frequency of the dose, etc., are also complicating factors. Moreover, in very many cases the infection is a mixed one and hence we are dealing with other factors than straight tuberculosis.

Two Individuals of Tubercular Stocks Should Not Marry.—However, sufficient is now known of theinheritance of susceptibility to the disease that we can have little conscience toward the welfare of the race if we in any way countenance the marriage of two individuals who come each of tubercular strains, and marriage of even a normal person into a badly tainted strain, where the one married is tubercular, is extremely hazardous looked at from the standpoint of the children likely to be born of such a union. The Supreme Court of New York recently held that the fraudulent concealment of tuberculosis by a person entering into a marriage relation is ground for the annulment of the marriage.

Special Susceptibility Less of a Factor in Many Diseases.—With some diseases such as leprosy, typhoid fever, smallpox and cholera there seems to be less a question of special susceptibility since nearly all persons are vulnerable. Yet in cases of typhoid, at least, there are some indications that certain families are more likely to take the disease than others under similar exposure. We know of no inherited effects of such diseases, however. For instance, children of lepers do not inherit leprosy and if kept out of leper districts remain normal.

Deaf-Mutism.—In certain abnormal states there is danger of confusing similar conditions which may have two entirely different sources of origin. Deafness, for example, may be strictly inborn as the outcome of a germinal variation or it may result from extraneous influences such as accidents, infective diseases, neglected tonsils and the like. The former is inheritable, the latter not. Bell in 1906 in a special census report to the United States government showedthat deaf-mutism is markedly hereditary, particularly where deaf-mutes intermarry as they are prone to do. Fay’s extensive studies onMarriage of the Deaf in Americaalso demonstrate the hereditary nature of the congenital forms of deafness. Cut off as such individuals are from communication with normal people, the association of the two sexes in special schools and institutions is of course highly conducive to such marriages. The defect seems to behave in the manner of a Mendelian recessive. Two deaf-mutes should not have children and yet such marriages are occurring every day. Even if two persons marry from families which tend to become hard of hearing the evidence indicates that their children are likely also to develop this partial deafness as they grow older, although it seems safe for a person of such tendency to marry into a family without it.

Gout.—In such disorders as gout there is little question but that a tendency to it runs in families. On the other hand it may also be acquired without special susceptibility. There is no evidence, however, that because a father has gout the effect of the gout is reflected on his germ-cells and the son has gout as a result. Indeed, often a son who becomes gouty was born long before the father became gouty. Son and father both have gout then, because each has innate germinal tendencies which when subjected to certain evocative stimuli become expressed as gout.

Nervous and Mental Diseases.—Inasmuch as the question of nervous and mental diseases has become one of such overshadowing importance at the present day, a discussion of the subject at some length will bepresented in a separate chapter. I shall merely point out here that the general verdict of experts in nervous and mental disorders is to the effect that externally induced mental disorders are of rare occurrence except as the result of general poisoning or enfeeblement of the system in some way, or by traumatic conditions such as a blow on the head, and that there is no evidence of the transmission of the effects of such conditions. In most cases of insanity, supposedly caused by fright or worry, a close study of the family stock will reveal nervous instability of some kind. The supposed cause has been merely the precipitating stimulus which has brought to expression a dormant weakness of germinal origin. The stress and strain of modern life is particularly likely to test out and reveal such neurally unstable individuals.

Other Disorders Which Have Hereditary Aspects.—Space will not permit discussion of various other specific disorders which are known to have important hereditary aspects, although none shows any convincing evidence of having become hereditary in nature through first affecting the soma. Some of these, such as epilepsy and other nervous affections, tuberculosis, color-blindness, cataract and various malformations, have already been mentioned. Others that may be listed are cancer, arterio-sclerosis, obesity and certain forms of rheumatism, and of heart and kidney diseases. In practically all of these cases in which heredity enters as a factor the condition is one of inheriting a special susceptibility and not the disease itself. Which means simply that the disorder in questionis much more easily called forth in such persons by appropriate bacterial or other stimulus, than in the case of the normal individual.

Induced Immunity Not Inherited.—Lastly, it is well known that various animals, including man, after recovery from an attack of any one of certain diseases, become more or less immune from further attacks of the same disease. Moreover in some instances as in inoculation against typhoid or diphtheria, immunity may be artificially induced by means of anti-toxins. The question arises as to whether such immunity is transmitted to offspring. Experiments have been made (seeBulletin No. 30, U. S. Hygienic Laboratory) to test this and it has been found that the condition is not inherited. Young guinea-pigs, for instance, born of mothers immunized during pregnancy are immune at birth but they lose their immunity in the course of a few weeks. The effect is clearly one of direct transference from the blood of the mother. The same temporary immunity can be produced in the young, in fact, by merely having them nurse from an immunized mother.

Non-Inheritance of Parental Modifications Has Social, Ethical and Educational Significance.—Like many other biological conclusions these relative to the non-inheritance of parental modifications are of extreme importance to humanity. It is clear that they have not only physical but social, ethical and educational significance. For if the education which we give our children of to-day, or the desirable moral conduct which we inculcate does not affect theoffspring of succeeding generations through inheritance, then the actual progress of the race is much slower than is commonly supposed, and the advance of modern over ancient times lies more in an improvement in extraneous conditions through invention and the accumulation and rendering accessible of knowledge, than in an actual innate individual superiority. And when we face the issue squarely we have to admit that there is no more indication of the inheritance of parentally acquired characters as regards customs, knowledge, habits and moral traditions than there is of physical features. In fact, if such acquirements were inherited then we should soon have a race which would naturally, spontaneously as it were, do what its ancestors did with effort. Yet we do not find the children in our schools reading, doing sums and developing proper social relations without ceaseless prompting and urging on the part of the teacher. Indeed I can testify that this necessity carries over even into a university. In short, the habits and standards of each generation have to be instilled into the succeeding generation.

No Cause for Discouragement.—At first glance when we realize that notwithstanding our individual advancement, that in spite of all our painstaking efforts toward self-improvement, we can not add one jot or tittle to the native ability of our children, that, aside from possible advantageous germinal variations, they will have to start in at approximately the same level as we did, and like us will have to struggle, or be coaxed, pulled or spurred up to the higher reaches ofattainments, we are apt to feel discouraged and to look on heredity as the hand of fate which irrevocably bars progress. But there is another side to the picture. This very fact of heredity which can not be altered at will is the conservative factor which maintains the excellence of our standard strains of plants and animals, and sustains man himself at his present level of accomplishment. While we are denied advancement through the efforts of the flesh, we are also largely protected from our misfortunes and follies, as witness the non-inheritance of mutilations, of various maladies of extrinsic origin, or of personally acquired bad habits.

Improved Environment Will Help Conserve the Superior Strains When They Do Appear.—If we can not hand on to our descendants a personally enhanced blood heritage, we at least can do our share toward building up a social heritage of established truth, of efficient institutions and of stimulating ideals, through which their dormant capacities may be led to expand more surely and more effectively to their uttermost limits. Each advance in such social heritage will tend more and more to create an atmosphere which will make it sure that the occasional real progressive and permanent variations which occur from time to time will find adequate expression and preservation in future lines of descendants. It will reduce the numbers of our “mute, inglorious Miltons” by more certainly disclosing the individual of exceptional talents and insuring for him an opportunity of revealing them to the best advantage. Above all, since surrounding influences are especially powerful onyoung and developing organisms, we should realize that great care must be exercised in behalf of the young child to secure an environment which is saturated with wholesome influences. For it is a rule of development that if the environment is faulty the organism is impaired.

PRENATAL INFLUENCES

All That a Child Possesses at Birth Not Necessarily Hereditary.—We come now to the more specific discussion of what may happen to offspring of mammals, and particularly man, in the interval between fertilization and birth; that is, during the intra-maternal period. We have already seen that anything affecting the offspring during this period has to be reckoned as environmental, our formula reading, Mammal = germ + intra-maternal environment + external environment. It is evident, then, that all that a child possesses at birth is not necessarily hereditary, since the unborn child may be influenced by conditions prevailing in either parent.

The Myth of Maternal Impressions.—In order to clear the way for more urgent matters let us first inquire into the question of the production of changes in the unborn child as a result of “maternal impressions.” As the tale generally goes, structural changes are produced in the unborn child corresponding to some mental experience of the mother, usually a vivid impression of strong emotion, but when a given individual is pinned down to sources, it is usually a case of hearsay.

Stock examples are: The mother sees a mouse with the result that a mouse-shaped birthmark occurson the child; or she sees a crushed hand and in consequence bears a child later with some of the bones of the hand missing; the mother touches her body when frightened and thus marks the unborn child on the corresponding part of the body; or she produces beauty in the child by long contemplation of a picture of a beautiful child; and so on almost endlessly. The favorite is usually the production of a red birthmark or marks on the child’s body by strong desire on the part of the mother for strawberries, tomatoes, etc.—the fruit must be red since the mark is red—or by fright from seeing a fire. As a matter of fact it is not uncommon for the capillary blood vessels of the skin of a new-born infant to remain dilated in spots instead of contracting as they normally should do. The result is more or less of a red or “flame” spot. It is easy to see, therefore, why such birthmarks are so frequently referred back by the credulous mother to her desire for or fear of some red object.

An analysis of the case of a child shuddering at the sight of peaches is of interest in this connection. The child showed the greatest aversion to peaches, particularly to the fuzzy covering. The mother’s explanation was that peaches were unusually plentiful the year the child was born and that she had worked hour after hour at peeling and canning peaches shortly before his birth until she had become thoroughly sick of them. This acquired aversion on her part she believed had been transferred to the child. A few questions revealed the fact, however, that the mother, herself, had never liked peaches and when asked if they were distasteful to any other member of her ownfamily she exclaimed, “Oh, yes, my mother would shudder and shake if a peach were brought near her.” And there we have it. The idiosyncrasy was an inherited one as many similar peculiarities are. The mental impression produced in the mother by her own experience with peaches had nothing to do with its occurrence in the child.

Very frequently also one encounters the mother who is sure she has engendered musical ability in her child by constant practise and study of music during pregnancy. The child is musical; what better evidence does one want! It seems never to occur to such a mother that the child is musically inclined because she herself is, as is evinced by her own desire in the matter even if she is not a skillful performer.

When we take into account the extreme credulity of many people, the unconscious tendency of mankind to give a dramatic interpretation to events where causes are not certainly known, the hosts of coincidences that occur in life, and the multitude of cases where something should happen but nothing does, we are compelled to believe that the whole matter of direct specific influence of the mother’s mind on the developing fetus is a myth. After seeing the conditions which prevail in Mendelism, for example, it will take strong faith to believe that a mother with duplex brown eyes can “think” or “will” blue eyes on her baby, yet this would be a mild procedure compared to some we are asked to accept by believers in the transmission of maternal impressions. Most of all, however, when we recall the actual relation between the embryo and the mother—a narrow umbilical cord is the sole means ofcommunication between the two—the physical impossibility of a connection between some particular mental happening of the mother and a corresponding specific modification in the fetus becomes evident. For there are no nerves in the umbilical cord, the only path of communication between mother and fetus being the indirect one by way of the blood stream. Even this method of communication is limited inasmuch as the mother’s blood does not circulate through the blood vessels of the fetus. Gaseous and dissolved substances are merely interchanged through the thin walls of the capillary blood vessels in the placenta.

Injurious Prenatal Influences.—However, the denial that a particular mental impression of the mother is associated with a particular structural defect in a child does not carry with it the implication that prenatal influences of all kinds are negligible factors. On the contrary any deleterious effect which can reach the fetus through absorption from the blood of the mother may be of grave consequence. There is not the least doubt that malnutrition or serious ill-health on the part of the mother often has a prejudicial effect on the unborn offspring. Severe shock or grief, worry, nervous exhaustion, the influence of certain diseases, poisons in the blood or tissues of the parent, such as lead, mercury, phosphorus, alcohol and the like, may all act detrimentally, but they operate either by rendering nutrition defective, by direct poisoning, or by generating toxins in the blood of the parent which then poison the fetus. Among the latter may be mentioned the toxic products of tuberculosis and certain other bacterial diseases. Such factors operating onthe unborn young or even on the germ-cells may cause malformations, arrests of development, instabilities of the nervous system, and general physical or mental weakness. The effects are general, however, and not specific.

To distinguish certain of these prenatal effects, particularly those of certain diseases or poisons, from true hereditary influences they are frequently spoken of as cases oftransmissionrather than inheritance from parents. Some writers use the technical termblastophthoria, or false-heredity, extending the meaning so as to include also any damage that might be inflicted on the germ-cells.

Lead Poisoning.—By way of illustration of how certain cumulative poisons may act we may examine a tabulation of eighty-one cases of lead poisoning as reported by Constantin Paul (Fig. 29,p. 164).

The table requires little comment. The disastrous effects of such poisoning are apparent in every class of cases. The sixth class where the husband alone was exposed to lead shows that the poison can operate directly through the germ-cell. Other observers note that in the children of workers in lead, there is a distressing frequency of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy.

That lead poisoning operating through the germ-cells of the father can affect the development of the young harmfully is well shown in Fig. 30,p. 165, which is a photograph of two young rabbits from the same litter The white young one is from a normal albino mother mated to an albino father which had received lead treatment. The pigmented young one is from the same albino mother by a normal pigmented father.Although the white father was considerably larger than the pigmented father, nevertheless the young of the former, because of the harmful effects of the lead, is distinctly smaller and less lively. A number of litters, each from the same mother but in part from a lead-poisoned father and in part from a normal father, have been secured. All show more or less the same results. The experiments are still in progress in the department of experimental breeding at the University of Wisconsin.

Fig. 29

Tabulation of eighty-one cases of lead poisoning recorded by Constantin Paul (from Adami).

Fig. 30

Photograph of young rabbits from the same litter, the smaller one stunted by lead-poisoning of its father (Courtesy of Professor L. J. Cole).

The Expectant Mother Should Have Rest.—The mere matter of rest on the part of the pregnant mother is, judging from the work of Pinard, a Frenchman, and his pupils, an important one. In a number of detailed investigations they have shown that rest on the part of the working mother during the last three months before the child is born results in the production of markedly larger and more robust children than those born of mothers equally healthy but who have not had such rest. Moreover the danger of premature birth is considerably lessened.

Too Short Intervals Between Children.—Too short an interval between childbirths would also seem to be an infringement on the rights of the child as well as of the mother. Thus Doctor R. J. Ewart (“The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring,”Eugenic Review, October, 1911) finds that children born at intervals of less than two years after the birth of the previous child still show at the age of six a notable deficiency in height, weight and intelligence, when compared with the children born after a longer interval, or even with first-born children.

Our Duty to Safeguard Motherhood.—Doubtless the unventilated factory and tenement also do their share, even though we can give no exact quantitative measure of it. Obviously, it becomes a civic duty to protect as much as possible all members of our social system from such injurious factors as have just been discussed. It is particularly necessary to safeguard mothers before confinement, especially working mothers.

Expectant Mothers Neglected.—According to theclaims of life insurance men, expectant mothers are the most neglected members of our population. Doctor Van Ingen, of New York City, estimates that ninety per cent. of women in this country are wholly without prenatal care. Yet every prospective mother should be taught the probable meaning of such symptoms as headache, hemorrhages, swelling of the feet and disturbed vision. She should realize the importance of submitting a sample of urine for analysis at least once a month before childbirth and twice a month for a while thereafter. She should be specially informed regarding work, exercise, diet and dress. A recent government bulletin written by Mrs. Max West which may be had free by writing to the Children’s Bureau, Department of Labor, Washington, D. C., gives much useful information on this subject.

ALCOHOLISM

Unreliability of Much of the Data.—One of the most important poisons that plays a prominent part among ante-natal influences is alcohol. But when it comes to a study of the problem of alcoholism from the standpoint of heredity and parental influences we meet with many difficulties, prominent among which are the inaccuracy and unreliability of many of the statistics brought forward in this connection. Many of the results are vitiated by the prejudices of propagandists who propose to make a case either for or against alcohol as a beverage whether or not the facts justify their conclusions. When one tries to view the matter with an open mind he finds that there is adeplorable lack of statistics which are not susceptible to more than one interpretation. However, using as much as possible what seems to be unbiased data, the evidence is almost wholly against alcohol as a beverage, at least to any immoderate extent.

Alcohol a Germinal or Fetal Poison.—The bad effects as far as offspring are concerned reveal themselves in the main under the category of “false heredity,” i. e., germinal or fetal poisonings rather than of heritable changes induced in the germ-cells. Most investigators feel that there are too many criminal, imbecile, insane and unhealthy persons among the offspring of drunkards to dismiss the matter as a coincidence. In an investigation of Imbault, for example, we find recorded of one hundred tuberculous children that while forty-one were of tuberculous parentage, thirty-six per cent, were the offspring of inebriates. Furthermore Imbault cites the observations of Arrivé on 1,506 cases of juvenile meningitis to the effect that this malady is twice as frequent in the children of alcoholic as in those of tuberculous parentage. It has been proved by Nicloux (L’Obstetrique, Vol. 99, 1900) that in dogs and guinea-pigs alcohol passes through the placenta and may be detected in fetal tissues; hence it is in position to influence the fetus. He found that in a very short time the amount of alcohol in the blood of the fetus about paralleled that in the blood of the mother.

Progressive Increase in Death-Rate of Offspring of Inebriate Women.—In an investigation on the effects of parental alcoholism on the offspring, Sullivan (Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 45, 1899) givessome important figures. To avoid other complications he chose female drunkards in whom no other degenerative features were evident. He found that among these the percentage of abortions, still-births and deaths of infants before their third year was 55.8 per cent. as against 23.9 per cent. in sober mothers. In answer to the objection that this high percentage may be due merely to neglect, and not to impairment of the fetus by alcoholism, he points out the fact based on the history of the successive births, that there was a progressive increase in the death-rate of offspring in proportion to the length of time the mother had been an inebriate, thus:

Views of a Psychiatrist on Alcohol.—Forel, who for years was the psychiatrist at the head of a large insane asylum at Zurich, Switzerland, has this to say about the effects of narcotic poisons and alcohol in particular:

“The offspring tainted with alcoholic blastophthoria suffer various bodily and physical anomalies, among which are dwarfism, rickets, a predisposition to tuberculosis and epilepsy, moral idiocy, and idiocy in general, a predisposition to crime and mental diseases, sexual perversions, loss of suckling in women, and many other misfortunes.”

In another passage he[6]remarks as follows:

“But what is of much greater importance is the fact that acute and chronic alcoholic intoxication deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of the procreators.... The recent researches of Bezzola seem to prove that the old belief in the bad quality of children conceived during drunkenness is not without foundation. Relying on the Swiss census of 1900, in which there figure nine thousand idiots, and after careful examination of the bulletins concerning them, this author has proved that there are two acute annual maximum periods for the conception of idiots (calculated from nine months before birth); the periods of carnival and vintage, when the people drink most. In the wine-growing districts the maximum conception of idiots is enormous, while it is almost nil at other periods. Moreover, these two maximum periods come at the time of year when conception is at a minimum among the rest of the population, the maximum of normal conceptions occurring at the beginning of summer.”

Another interpretation of Bezzola’s results has been suggested to the effect that the license of these periods enables the defective members of the community, such as the feeble-minded, an opportunity of mating more readily and that consequently the result is direct inheritance of idiocy and allied defects instead of idiocy produced through alcoholic poisoning of the parental germ-cell.

Other Views.—There are indeed many competent investigators who believe that alcoholism in parents has little or no part in the direct production of mental defects in children. For instance, Tredgold quotesDoctor Ireland’s observations that although at New Year, when the fishermen return, the whole population of certain villages in Scotland gets drunk, there is no noticeable excess of defectives born nine months later, and remarks further that, “I have histories of idiots conceived under such circumstances, but so I have of normal children, and my opinion is, that while this may be a cause in some cases, the number of instances in this country at any rate is exceedingly small.” Again, Goddard, one of our best known American students of feeble-mindedness, who has made careful study of this point under especially favorable conditions, feels that his data do not prove that alcoholism of either the father or the mother causes feeble-mindedness in the child. He concludes, “Everything seems to indicate that alcoholism itself is only a symptom; that it for the most part occurs in families where there is some form of neurotic taint, especially feeble-mindedness.” Goddard, however, in common with many other observers, notes that miscarriages and deaths in infancy are far higher among inebriates than among abstainers.

Doctor Mjöen cites an interesting parallel between the increase of feeble-mindedness in Norway and a period from 1816 to 1835, when every one was permitted to distil brandy. In some districts many of the farmers distilled brandy from corn and potatoes, and in such regions during this period feeble-mindedness increased nearly one hundred per cent. Later the home distillation of brandy was stopped. According to Doctor Mjöen, “The enormous increase in idiots cameand went with the brandy.” He is inclined to believe, however, that the alcohol operated injuriously mainly on stocks already defective.

The Affinity of Alcohol for Germinal Tissue.—Nicloux and Renault have shown that alcohol has a decided affinity for the reproductive glands. In individuals who have recently taken alcohol the proportion of alcohol in the gonads is soon almost equal to the amount found in the blood. Thus in experiments on mammals it was found that the proportion of alcohol in the ovary to that in the blood was as three to five, and in the testis as two to three. This would afford abundant opportunity for alcohol to act directly on the spermatozoon or the ovum.

A number of different investigators concur in finding that the germ-glands of the male human inebriate in many cases show more or less atrophy and other degenerative changes. In guinea-pigs which have been repeatedly intoxicated with alcohol, Stockard found that while he could detect no visible abnormality in the gonad, nevertheless their defective and weakened progeny showed that the germ-cells had been affected.

Innate Degeneracy Versus the Effects of Alcohol.—Many observations on human beings have been brought forward which at first sight seem to indicate that noticeable defects, particularly mental and nervous, occur with appalling frequency in children resulting from conception during intoxication, although, unfortunately, the evidence is rarely clear as to whether the defects are really due to the effects of the alcohol or to the fact that the parent or parents were degenerate to begin with.

A very interesting human case cited by Forel on the authority of Schweighofer is that of a normal woman who had three sound children when married to a normal man. After the death of this husband she married an inebriate by whom she had three other children. One of these suffered from infantilism, one turned out to be a drunkard, and the third became a social degenerate and drunkard. Moreover the first two contracted tuberculosis, although hitherto the family stock had been free from this malady. Ultimately the woman married again and by this third husband, who was normal, she again had sound children. Similar cases might be cited, as, for example, a record of eighty-three epileptics, of whom sixty had drunken parents, but it can be urged against all of them, of course, that the defective offspring were due to an innate degeneracy of the drunken parent which made him a drunkard rather than to the effects of the alcohol he took. While one is skeptical as to the validity of this objection in all of the many cases which occur with such monotonous frequency in man, there is no way of escaping such an interpretation with the evidence at hand. It must be admitted, moreover, that there are many families with one or both parents alcoholic in which the children are not mentally defective.

Experimental Alcoholism in Lower Animals.—Many of the objections that exist in the case of man, however, do not apply in that of lower animals. If normal animals are experimentally alcoholized and are shown to produce defective offspring under such conditions, then in their cases at least, the disorders in the offspring must be due to the effects of alcohol andnot to an innately degenerate condition of the parent. Disorders similar to some of those seen in the children of alcoholics do actually result in alcoholized animals of one kind or another.

Against the earlier experiments on animals it has been urged that too few individuals were used to give conclusive results, but this objection can not be brought against the recent experiments of Stockard. While he has published accounts of his work in various scientific periodicals lately, the reader will find a full statement of his own experiments, together with a review of the whole subject of experimental alcoholism in animals and the effects on progeny inThe American Naturalist, Vol. XLVII, November, 1913, together with a useful bibliography.

Before taking up Stockard’s results we may select a few of the more significant experiments made earlier by other investigators.

Laitinen alcoholized rabbits and guinea-pigs. He found that the treated individuals had more still-born young than the control, and also that growth of the living young was retarded. His alcoholized rabbits and guinea-pigs produced more young than did the normal individuals used as a control. Laitinen’s studies on man, together with three other studies of the Eugenics Laboratory in London, show that in man also more children are born to alcoholics than to normal parents. Goddard’s investigations in America corroborate this fact.

Ceni found that only 43 per cent. of the eggs from alcoholized fowls developed normally, as against 77 per cent. of normal development in the controls. Moreoverthe eggs of alcoholic fowls were shown to be less resistant to adverse conditions than normal eggs from the fact that fluctuations of temperature at the beginning of incubation kept all the alcoholic eggs from developing perfectly, while 27 per cent. of the control eggs developed normally under the same adverse circumstances.

Hodge made a pair of dogs alcoholic. Of 23 pups obtained from the pair, 8 were deformed and 9 were dead; 4 alone were viable. From a control pair of dogs 45 pups were obtained, of which 4 were deformed, none were born dead, and 41 were viable.

Stockard’s Experiments on Guinea-Pigs.—Stockard’s experiments demonstrate that the offspring of mammals may be injured or modified in their development by treating either parent repeatedly with alcohol. The guinea-pigs used in the experiment were all first tested by normal matings and found to yield normal offspring. The alcohol was given to them by inhalation. It was found to be readily taken into the animals’ blood and to produce intoxication. While guinea-pigs alcoholized in this way as often as six times a week for two and one-half years would maintain their own bodily vigor and health apparently, the deleterious effects on their progeny were marked. The defects were general rather than specific, although the central nervous system and special sense organs were apparently affected most.

Out of 119 total young produced by the alcoholic animals, only 52, or less than 44 per cent., survived, whereas out of 64 young produced from normal parents used as a control for the experiment, 56, or over87 per cent., survived. In some cases alcoholic males were mated with normal females, in other, alcoholic females with normal males. In still other instances both parents were alcoholic.

The results are summarized in the accompanying table (Fig. 31), taken from Stockard’s paper:

Condition of the Offspring from Guinea-Pigs Treated with Alcohol

Fig. 31

Table showing condition of the offspring from guinea-pigs treated with alcohol (after Stockard).

Lines four and five give a comparison between the 103 total matings of all treated individuals and 35 normal matings. In the first case almost 42 per cent. of the matings gave negative results or early abortions, whereas in the normal control matings, failure to yield a full-term litter occurred in only two cases. The 103 matings of alcoholic animals gave only 46 living litters, or about 45 per cent. On the other hand the 35 control matings produced 32 living litters, or 91½per cent. It will be observed also that from such of the 103 matings of alcoholics as produced young there were 30 still-born, 37 which died soon after birth, and only 52 surviving young, whereas from the 35 matings of normal individuals there were only 4 still-born young, 4 which died soon after birth, and 56 surviving young.

The bottom line of the table, although, as Stockard points out, containing too few cases to prove wholly convincing, indicates that alcoholizing erstwhile normal females during pregnancy was not particularly harmful to the embryosin utero.

Some of the most interesting results were obtained when offspring termed second generation animals, derived from alcoholic parents though not themselves treated with alcohol, were mated in various ways. When such individuals were mated with normal individuals, although the litters were small, the results were normal, the normal mate having seemingly counteracted any defects which might have lurked in the second generation animal. On the other hand, out of three matings of second generation animals with alcoholic individuals, two produced still-born young, of which one was markedly deformed, while the third yielded two living young.

However, the most striking results were obtained when two second generation individuals, the offspring of alcoholic parents, were bred together. Although themselves untreated, these individuals, of which 19 matings were made, produced as many or more defective young than did their alcoholic parents. Seven of the matings were unfruitful. The remaining 12matings gave living litters consisting of 19 individuals in all. Six of these showed various nerve disorders (spasms, epileptic-like seizures, etc.) soon after birth; one was eyeless and otherwise deformed.

Stockard’s Interpretation.—Stockard’s interpretation of his experiments is as follows: “Mammals treated with injurious substances, such as alcohol, ether, lead, etc., suffer from the treatments by having the tissues of their bodies injured. When the reproductive glands and germ-cells become injured in this way they give rise to offspring showing weak and degenerative conditions of a general nature, and every cell of these offspring having been derived from the injured egg or sperm-cell are necessarily similarly injured and can only give rise to other injured cells and thus the next generation of offspring are equally weak and injured and so on. The only hope for such a line of individuals is that it can be crossed by normal stock, in which case the vigor of the normal germ-cell in the combination may counteract, or at any rate reduce, the extent of injury in the body cells of the resulting animal.”

He also believes that various deformities and developmental arrests such as harelip and cleft-palate may similarly be cases of transmission rather than true inheritance, due to the weakening of the germ-cells in some way, or to some lack of full vigor in the uterine environment.

Further Remarks on the Situation in Man.—Returning now to the question of alcoholism in man, it seems in view of the strong circumstantial evidence in the case of man himself, together with the result ofexperiments on animals, that little doubt remains that excessive alcoholism might result in the production of defective offspring. On the other hand an antecedent degeneracy or neural instability undoubtedly plays an important part in many cases, in the original production of drunkards, and when such occurs, it, as well as the direct effects of alcoholic poisoning, must be reckoned with in the effects on progeny. Studies carried on by Pearson, Elderton and Barrington of the Eugenic Laboratory in London lead these investigators to the conclusion that extreme alcoholism is aresultnot acauseof degeneracy. That is, the degeneracy is due to the defective stock, not to alcohol. They cite in evidence their records of four thousand school children of alcoholic and of sober parents, which fail to show any unfavorable effect of alcohol on offspring. Some of their critics, however, maintain that they did not choose subjects who were sufficiently alcoholic to give the injurious results that might legitimately be expected among the offspring of excessive drinkers or habitual drunkards.

Where children show a hereditary inclination toward drink, unquestionably one of the strongest factors is the inheritance of the same disposition, the same unstable nervous constitution and its accompanying lack of self-control which led the parent to drink, rather than the inheritance of the effects of the drink on the parent. For in many cases a parent may not become a drunkard until after the children who also become drunkards are born. That the tendency to drink immoderately is frequently due to a strain of feeble-mindedness or epilepsy becomes more evidentevery day. In many of the so-called “periodical” drunkards, the accompanying features of their periodic attacks of drink-craving, such as clouding of memory, restlessness and depression, are those commonly associated with ordinary epileptic attacks.

Probably Over Fifty Per Cent. of Inebriety in Man Due to Defective Nervous Constitution.—Branthwaite, an English authority on drunkenness, finds that about sixty-three per cent. of the inebriates who come to his notice are mentally defective. In alcoholic insanities heredity is a potent factor. It is coming to be realized more and more that pronounced alcoholism is due in a large percentage of cases, perhaps over half, to a defective nervous make-up. While it is true that many drunkards would not develop without free access to alcohol, on the other hand many would never develop without a bad heredity back of them, which gives them a peculiar nervous constitution that renders alcohol an undue stimulus. In a recent report of the New York State Hospital Commission it is stated that in fifty-four per cent. of the cases of alcoholic insanity, a family history of insanity, epilepsy or nervous disease exists. Thus in the presence of alcohol most of these unfortunates are helpless pawns of a hereditary weakness.

So when the question of alcoholism is viewed from all angles, the children of the human drunkard would seem to run a double menace of misfortune, since they may be subject both to the direct poisoning effects of alcohol and the results of an inheritable degeneracy.

Factors to Be Reckoned With in the Study of Alcoholism.—In any thoroughgoing study ofalcoholism in man many factors will have to be reckoned with. First of all there is the question of inherent lack of control. This is probably the principal thing inherited where heredity truly enters as a factor. That example and social environment are important factors in addition to or in place of heredity is clear, too, when we observe that often it is the boys only who take after a drunken father, for there is no evidence that the inherited tendency when it really exists is at all sex-linked. Again, in certain occupations carried on under unwholesome influences relief is frequently sought in alcoholic stimulants, and such custom may easily crystallize into habit. Furthermore, the accustoming young children to doses of alcohol, or the unborn young to alcohol through the body of a drunken mother, may be strongly contributory toward establishing inebriety in certain cases. As we have seen from an abundance of experimental data on animals, moreover, the nurture effects on germ-cells may result in the production of weakened offspring. Such offspring in the case of man are probably less able to withstand temptations of all kinds and hence readily succumb to the habit-forming effects of alcohol if once its use is begun. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that alcoholism in the father usually means poverty and the subsequent accompaniment of malnutrition and neglect of the children, and this in itself may not only account for poor development of the latter, but may also be strongly contributory toward establishing the habit of alcoholism in them.

An inherent bias plus most of the other conditionsjust enumerated is the not unusual lot of the offspring of drunkards.

Venereal Diseases.—There is yet another very considerable class of maritally unfit who in any conscientious discussion of unfitness for marriage or of racial improvement must be considered. I refer to those who are afflicted with the diseases which are inseparably associated with the so-called “social evil.” Togonorrhea, one of the most prevalent of these diseases, more than one-fourth of our total one hundred and ten thousand blind in the United States are said to owe their affliction. Milder types of eye disease may also result from such infections. As much as eighty per cent., or some say practically all blindness in children born blind is caused by it, the infection occurring at the time of birth or within a few days thereafter. The terrible consequences of this disease to the innocent wife would alone make its discussion imperative.

The Seriousness of the Situation.—Unfortunately the insidious nature of gonorrheal infections is unknown to most persons. A cure is apparently effected, yet as a matter of fact the germs may live for years and, if in the male, later be transmitted to the wife, subjecting her to a future of invalidism and misery. Reliable statistics from various medical authorities reveal the appalling fact that seventy-five per cent. or more of the surgical operations for inflammatory pelvic disorders peculiar to women, such as pus tubes and peritonitis, are attributable to this disease, as is also the involuntary sterility of forty-five per cent. of childless women. Unwelcome as the fact is there is an abundance of evidence to show that a large percentageof men in particular have at some period of their life been infected with venereal disease. Of our fourteen million males in the United States under the age of thirty we find estimates by some specialists in venereal diseases to the effect that five million of them, that is, one out of three, suffer from some one of the social diseases or their consequences. Doctor Hugh Cabot, one of the chief surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital at Boston, a member of the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and president of the American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons, has this to say about the situation: “We have of late years heard much about the frequency and serious consequences of tuberculosis; it has been dubbed the ‘white plague,’ and so active has been the campaign that a wide-spread understanding of this serious disease has resulted. It may safely be averred that in the urban population at least there are two, and perhaps three, individuals with syphilis to every one with tuberculosis. The frequency of gonococcus infection is much higher.” He believes that over half the male population acquire a gonococcus infection at some period of their career. While as a layman, one can not but feel that a specialist’s estimate may run unduly high because of the fact that he is encountering an inordinate proportion of such maladies every day, still such specialists are in position to get at the truth as no other person can and their calculations are probably not grossly in error. In any event any one who has progressed in worldly knowledge beyond the naïveté of a child must recognize the appalling prevalence of these maladies.

Infantile Blindness.—So serious has the matterof infantile blindness become that some state boards of health and some city health departments supply all physicians and midwives with specially prepared packages containing cotton and nitrate of silver solution for preventive or curative treatment of the eyes of all new-born children. At the time of the first bath each eye is carefully washed with a separate pledget of cotton saturated with boric acid solution. Each then receives a drop of the silver solution, which is made just strong enough to kill any gonococci that might be present without itself inflaming the eye. Water used in bathing the baby’s body of course is not allowed to come in contact with its eyes. Such treatment should be given every child no matter how unsuspicious the circumstances may be. German authorities who have been following this method now for some years assure us that nineteen-twentieths of the blindness of infancy can thus be prevented.

Syphilis.—As tosyphilis, another and even more terrible of these diseases, we have before us the absurd fact that while thousands upon thousands of dollars are being spent to establish a rigid inspection and preventive measures against the spread of a very similar disease in the horse, this malady in man is allowed to pass unchallenged and we are confronted by the gruesome certainty that there are hundreds of these diseased persons about us to-day who, on their mere affirmation that they are unmarried and of age, will be given the right to marry and thus produce families of infected children irrevocably doomed to early death or to lifelong misery.

While syphilis is most commonly spread throughrelations between the sexes, it may be acquired in various other ways, as for example, through a cut in shaving with the same razor an infected individual has used. It is commonly transmitted from parent to child. Practically every prostitute is a center of dissemination. Katherine Bement Davis has shown in her studies made at the New York State Reformatory for Women that while ordinary clinical tests show that apparently only twenty-one per cent. of these women are infected with venereal disease, more careful laboratory tests showed at least ninety per cent. to be infected.

Syphilis is caused byTreponema pallidum, a small unicellular animal parasite. Given access to the blood by any means whatever, possibly even through an abrasion in the lip by means of a kiss, it multiplies rapidly and any part or organ of the body may be attacked. Usually a small sore occurs at the point of entrance to the body, but often it heals up readily with little indication of the seriousness of the infection.

The development of the malady is insidious and long continued. As a matter of clinical convenience physicians divide its progress into successive stages although in reality the transitions are frequently variable and ill marked. The symptoms that arise within the first few months or even years are readily controlled by appropriate treatment, but to insure a cure prolonged and most thoroughgoing treatment is imperative. The symptoms disappear so completely after a short period of treatment that it is very difficult to persuade the average patient that he is not yet cured. Two years at least are none too short a period oftreatment, yet the majority of patients, fully convinced that they are merely being exploited by the physician as a source of revenue, drift away at the end of a few months. As a matter of fact, however, the germs usually persist long after the obvious symptoms of the disease have disappeared, and in consequence many of the most serious results of syphilis may not manifest themselves for a period of perhaps ten, twenty or thirty years.

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