MEDICAL ARGUMENTS 219 



It may be objected, however, that there are cases where a 

 mother rabbit or guinea-pig has been artificially rendered 

 immune to certain diseases, and has afterwards had young born 

 immune. This may be due to a kind of infection before birth, 

 some anti-toxin or other having probably passed from the 

 mother to the unborn young. (Misunderstanding No. V.) 



Medical Arguments. — A medical argument which has convinced 

 many is somewhat as follows. Its cogency rests on the difficulty of 

 drawing hard-and-fast defining lines. 



It is alleged that a pregnant woman with smallpox may infect her 

 unborn offspring — a clear case of intra-uterine contagion. 



A tubercular mother may have an offspring without tuberculosis, 

 but with something wrong with its heart. Here a constitutional 

 diathesis, stimulated by a bacillus, is followed by a result in the 

 offspring quite different from the condition in the parent. 



Toxins produced by bacterial disease in the parent may affect 

 the offspring without inducing any special disease, but by weakening 

 its constitution and power of resistance. 



Toxins produced, apart from bacterial disease, by a saturation of 

 the parent with alcohol, opium, and the like, may aifect the offspring 

 both functionally and structurally, with the result that there are 

 diseases and malformations. 



It has been shown experimentally that toxins (hydrocyanic acid, 

 nicotin, alcohol, etc.) may, directly injected into the eggs of fowls, 

 affect the development so that malformation results. It is stated 

 that the effects of lead-poisoning on the offspring may be wholly 

 due to the father. Therefore it seems legitimate to infer that toxins 

 produced in the body may have a direct effect upon the germinal 

 material. 



It is not shown, however, that the effect on the offspring is the 

 same as that induced in the parent — which is the biological point 

 under discussion^— and it is a wild hypothesis that an ordinary 

 m.odification liberates anything comparable to a toxin. 



Alcoholism. — Habitual drunkenness in a parent or in the 

 parents produces familiar modifications, and may be followed 

 by dire results in the offspring. But before drawing the hasty 

 conclusion that definite structural results of alcoholic poisoning 



