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 a deplorable 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) gives some 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:
| No. of cases | Per cent. born dead | Per cent. dying before 3 | Total percentage | |
| First births | 80 | 6.2 | 27.5 | 33.7 |
| Second births | 80 | 11.2 | 40.8 | 50.0 |
| Third births | 80 | 7.6 | 45.0 | 52.6 |
| Fourth and fifth | 111 | 10.8 | 54.9 | 65.7 |
| Sixth to tenth | 93 | 17.2 | 54.8 | 72.0 |
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 quotes Doctor 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.