RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 369 



Bunge 1 concludes as a result of his statistical studies, "if the 

 father is a drinker, the daughter loses the ability to nurse her 

 child, and this ability is irretrievably lost for all future genera- 

 tions. The incapacity to produce milk is no isolated phenom- 

 enon. It is coupled with other symptoms of degeneration, 

 especially with lack of resistance to maladies of all sorts, tuber- 

 culosis, nervous troubles and dental caries. The children become 

 insufficiently nourished, and the degeneration increases from 

 generation to generation and finally leads, after endless suffering, 

 to the extinction of the strain." 



Although other studies have yielded results which are not 

 quite so favorable to Bunge's thesis as are the results of his own 

 investigations, there is a considerable amount of additional data 

 confirming the association of parental alcoholism and defective 

 lactation. The interpretation of this relation, which has been 

 the subject of no little controversy, is rendered more difficult 

 by the influence of social factors, to say nothing of certain sources 

 of statistical error due to the way in which the data are amassed. 

 Bunge's conclusions cannot be said to have received rigid proof, 

 but his investigations justify a strong suspicion that alcohol may 

 have been the cause of diminished lactation and various other 

 defects associated with the atrophy of this function. 



Discussions of the racial degeneracy of mankind generally 

 emphasize the alleged increase of insanity, feeble-mindedness 

 and other forms of mental defect. But the question whether 

 mental defect is increasing or decreasing is one which at present 

 cannot be decided with entire certainty. Taking statistics at 

 their face value we should be compelled to conclude that in most 

 civilized countries mental defect is increasing quite rapidly, but 

 our conclusion would rest upon an insecure foundation if we failed 

 to consider probable causes of error in our statistical data. 



Let us see what statistics actually teach us: In 1880, according 

 to the U. S. Census Report for that year, there were 40,942 

 insane in hospitals and asylums in the United States, or 81.6 per 



1 Bunge, G. v., Die zunehmende Unfdhigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu stillen, 

 6th ed., Munich, 1909. 



