(1) alcohol, even in dilute quantities,
(2) fatigue poisons,
(3) opium, morphine, and similar drugs,
(4) lead and other poisonous metals,
(5) lack of nutrition due to anemic condition of the body.
If a germ cell is thus affected by poison at the time of the uniting of two cells, or during the subsequent development, the child is especially liable to:
(a) serious injury resulting in death before birth;
(b) low vitality resulting in death within a year after birth;
(c) defective development resulting in physical deformity or in mental defect, such as feeble-mindedness or idiocy.
If either parent is infected with syphilis, the germs most frequently attack the developing child and cause death before birth or during the first year; or the germs may attack any tissues, crippling, producing deformities, deafness, blindness, idiocy, manifest either at birth or later in life. If either parent is infected with gonorrhea, the eyes of the child will probably be infected at birth, and blindness prevented only by immediate use of silver nitrate solution; or the mother may be made incapable of having a child.