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 came and 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 and not 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 in The 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. Moreover the 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.