Max Bartels, "Isländischer Brauch," etc., Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, p. 65. A summary of the customs of various peoples in regard to pregnancy is given by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Sect. XXIX.
On the influence of alcohol during pregnancy on the embryo, see, e.g., G. Newman, Infant Mortality, pp. 72-77. W. C. Sullivan (Alcoholism, 1906, Ch. XI), summarizes the evidence showing that alcohol is a factor in human degeneration.
There is even reason to believe that the alcoholism of the mother's father may impair her ability as a mother. Bunge (Die Zunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu Stillen, fifth edition, 1907), from an investigation extending over 2,000 families, finds that chronic alcoholic poisoning in the father is the chief cause of the daughter's inability to suckle, this inability not usually being recovered in subsequent generations. Bunge has, however, been opposed by Dr. Agnes Bluhm, "Die Stillungsnot," Zeitschrift für Soziale Medizin, 1908 (fully summarized by herself in Sexual-Probleme, Jan., 1909).