PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM AND THE PROGENY 283 



They further find (p. 31) that: 



The general health of the children of alcoholic parents appears on 

 the whole shghtly better than the health of the children of sober par- 

 ents. There are fewer delicate children and in a most marked way 

 cases of tuberculosis and epilepsy are less frequent than among the 

 children of sober parents. The source of this relation may be sought 

 in two directions; the physically strongest in the community have 

 probably the greatest capacity and taste for alcohol. Further the 

 higher death rate of the children of alcoholic parents probably leaves 

 the fitter to survive. 



Nice (loc. cit., p. 146) summarizes his studies of the effect of 

 parental alcoholism upon the growth of the progeny in the fol- 

 lowing way: "Although the young of the alcohol mice when 

 given alcohol themselves excelled all the other mice in growth, 

 other young of these same mice [i.e., of alcoholic parentage] 

 when not given alcohol grew even faster." Ivanov, in his experi- 

 ments on artificial insemination, has obtained normal offspring, 

 which lived and made normal growth, from rabbits, guinea pigs, 

 dogs, and sheep, where the spermatozoa used to fertilize the 

 female were actually immersed at the time of fertilization in 

 solutions of ethyl alcohol ranging in strength from 0.5 per cent 

 to 10 per cent. 



These various results are not to be dismissed in so light ahd 

 cavalier a manner, and without reasons given, as they have been 

 in some recent reviews of the literature. The memoir by 

 Elderton and Pearson is a masterpiece of statistical research, 

 sane and temperate to a degree in its conclusions. Nice's study 

 of mice seems to be a sound, thorough and careful piece of 

 experimental work, quite the equal in respect of its technique 

 and its logic, of any experimental work which has been done 

 in this field. 



In attempting the interpretation of these results we are con- 

 fronted with several possibilities. In the first place it might be 

 maintained that there are fundamental physiological differences 

 between birds and mammals, of such extent and degree as to 

 make the action of alcohol and similar substances upon the 

 germ cells totally different in kind in the two cases. While 

 such a possibility can not be categorically denied, it seems to me 



