GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 119 



By putting two and two together the men came to this 

 conclusion : " The distillery and its alcohol in the cellar killed 

 some of the chicks before they were hatched, killed others 

 after they were hatched, and deformed all the misshapen 

 ones that we see about us." Dr. Forel's conclusion was that 

 even the fumes of alcohol have power to damage germ cells 

 while they are turning into living creatures. No one ques- 

 tioned the statement for a moment. It is indeed quite in 

 line with what Dr. Fer6 discovered between the years 1894 

 and 1903. 



He carried on two sets of tests with hens' eggs. All the 

 eggs were hatched in incubators. On one set he put vaporized 

 alcohol ; the other set was left alone. He repeated this ex- 

 periment many times, and the results were always the same. 

 Eggs that were not reached by alcoholic vapor hatched out 

 into the usual number of healthy chicks with minds ready for 

 active service. Eggs treated with the alcoholic vapor produced 

 many deformed chicks that had no minds whatever. They 

 ranked among chicks as idiots rank among men. They had 

 no mental power to guide their lives by. 



Guinea pigs also add a proof or two in this direction. 

 Dr. Stockard was the investigator. 1 He says that at first he 

 gave the guinea pigs alcohol with their food, but they disliked 

 it and ate less food. Next he put alcohol into the stomach 

 through a tube, but this distressed the animals, and he was 

 afraid it might do them harm. 



Then came his final device. He made air-tight copper tanks 

 that were a yard long, a foot high, and eighteen inches wide. 

 The tanks had wire-screen floors, and under the floors he put 

 cotton soaked in alcohol. The alcohol evaporated up into the 



1 See Archives of 'Internal Medicine, October, 1912, "Experimental Study of 

 Racial Degeneration in Mammals treated with Alcohol." 



