[CHAPTER XIV]
THE RACIAL POISONS: LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS
The term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst substances known to be poisonous to the individual, those which injure the germ-plasm: and amongst substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself, we must distinguish those which may also poison her unborn child. Alcohol is pre-eminently the racial poison, thus defined, and I plead for its recognition as primarily a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most important aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of Professor Forel will not lightly question this assertion.
The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very large. Amongst them must theoretically be included all abortifacient drugs. There are also various poisons of disease to be included in this category. Later pages must be devoted to what is by far the most important of these. But we may observe in passing that such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism has especial significance for the student of race-culture since, as he knows, its poisons circulating in the blood of an expectant mother may not only injure her own heart for life but may pass through the placenta and deform the valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result loosely described as “congenital heart disease.” The conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever, then, are conditions from which the expectant mother, even more than the ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. But this is of minor importance. We may here refer, however, to one or two striking cases, especially since they bear in some degree upon social and individual duty.
The racial influence of lead.—In the first place, it is necessary to draw attention to a really notable racial poison, viz., lead.
Says Sir Thomas Oliver,[75] “Lead destroys the reproductive powers of both men and women, but its special influence upon women during pregnancy is the cause of a great destruction of human life.” It may be said that in a sense the production of miscarriages and still-births, and also of infant mortality by lead, does not concern the student of race-culture. Nevertheless some of these children survive. Says Sir Thomas Oliver: “I have seen both cretinism and imbecility in infants in whom, as there could have been no possible influence of alcohol, and presumably none of syphilis, the occupation of one or other parent as a lead worker must have determined the imperfectly developed nervous system of the child.” Later he says (page 202): “Salpétrière and Bicêtre are large hospitals in Paris set aside for the reception and treatment of nervous diseases. The experience of the physicians of these institutions is unrivalled. One of the physicians, M. Roques, speaking of the degenerates found in these hospitals, says that slowly induced lead poisoning on the part of both parents or in one or other of them is not only a cause of repeated abortions, high percentage of still-births and high death-rate of infants, but is the cause of convulsions, imbecility, and idiocy in many of the children who survive the first year of existence. Of nineteen children born to parents who were lead workers, Rennert found that one child was still-born and that seventeen were macrocephalic. In his studies upon hereditary degeneration and idiocy, Bourneville places house-painters in the unenviable first rank of the occupations followed by parents of mentally weak children. Out of eighty-seven cases relating to unhealthy trades, fifty-one were connected with white lead in some form or another, while syphilis was only responsible for nineteen.”
This racial influence of lead is by no means generally recognised—even by Royal Commissioners. Its parallelism with the case of alcohol is striking. We may note, for instance, that paternal lead-poisoning, like paternal alcoholism, can cause degeneration in the offspring, if not indeed death before or shortly after birth. To quote Oliver again: “Taking seven healthy women who were married to lead workers, and in whom there was a total of thirty-two pregnancies, Lewin tells us that the results were as follows: eleven miscarriages, one still-birth, eight children died within the first year after birth, four in the second year, five in the third, and one subsequent to this, leaving only two children out of thirty-two pregnancies, as likely to live to manhood. In cases where women have a series of miscarriages so long as their husbands worked in lead, a change of industrial occupation on the part of the husbands restores to the wives normal child-bearing powers.” According to the statistical enquiry of Rennert, the malign influence of lead is exerted upon the next generation, ninety-four times out of one hundred when both parents have been working in lead, ninety-two times when the mother alone is affected, and sixty-three times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. Here, then, as in the case of alcohol, the racial poison may act either through the father or through the mother, but especially through the mother. The importance of the demonstration as regards the father in the case of both poisons is that it means a poisoning of the paternal germ-cell. The facts may be commended to those extremists, so much more Weismannian than Weismann, who regard the germ-cells as existing in a universe of their own, wholly unrelated to the rest of existence.
Another extremely interesting parallel between these two racial poisons may be noted. It is found, according to Professor Oliver, that “while following a healthy occupation these women, after having frequently miscarried when working in lead factories, would have two or three living healthy children, but circumstances necessitating the return of these women to town, and resumption of work in the lead factory, they in each successive pregnancy again miscarried.” He then quotes the following most remarkable case: “Mrs. K., aged thirty-four, had four children before going into the factory and two children after. She then had six miscarriages in succession, when she came under my care in the Royal Infirmary, having become the victim of plumbism and having lost the power in her arms and legs. She made a slow but good recovery and did not return to the lead works. In her next pregnancy she went to full term and gave birth to a living child.”
We see here that, as is also true in the case of alcoholism, the germinal tissue itself may escape or at any rate may recover from the effects of chronic poisoning of the individual who is its host. The race is more resistant than the individual. If, however, the poisoning continues whilst a new individual is being formed—that is to say, during pregnancy—that new individual succumbs, and indeed is far more gravely affected than its mother. Such a pregnant woman presents three distinct living objects for our study. Her own body is one: and this is already developed. It has some measure of resistance to the poison but is gravely affected. The embryo is the second; it is developing and because developing is susceptible. It is usually killed before birth. The third is the germ-plasm or the race, and this, as we have seen, may withstand the poison so well that when the poisoning is discontinued healthy children may be produced from it. Undoubtedly the case is the same as regards alcohol. The race or germ-plasm is most resistant, the developing individual is least resistant, and the adult individual—that is to say, the mother—occupies an intermediate position in this respect.
This parallelism, which has escaped previous observers, may be pointed out and its remarkable interest and significance suggested as a definite advance upon the absurd view that the germ-plasm is incapable of being poisoned. On the contrary, we know that many poisons will kill it outright, so that sterility results. But its high degree of resistance is a fact of great interest. Doubtless Dr. Archdall Reid's acute explanation of it is correct: namely, that natural selection would tend to evolve a resistant germ-plasm. Dr. Reid will, I think, be interested to notice in these remarkable observations on lead-poisoning a conspicuous illustration of this resistance.