PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM AND THE PROGENY 285 



papers that as the duration of the treatment is prolonged the 

 injurious effects on the germ cells get worse. This is of course 

 what one would expect, but the point is that he was able to 

 show positively harmful effects on the progeny in the early 

 stages of his experiments when the treatment prior to concep- 

 tion had not been greatly prolonged, and the results of these 

 matings early in the course of his experiments are, quite properly 

 of course, included in the latest summaries of the investigations 

 (cf. Stockard and Papanicolaou 38). Furthermore Stockard 

 (cf. 34, p. 381) as well as Fere earher, showed that the hen's egg 

 is very easily influenced by alcohol during incubation and caused 

 to develop teratogenetically. 



The second point is that a careful study of the present results 

 makes it impossible to assert that the treatment of the parents 

 has had no effect upon the progeny, which would be logically 

 necessary if one holds simply that the dosage has been too low 

 to be effective. The offspring of the alcoholists, as a class, 

 are indubitably differentiated from the offspring of the non- 

 alcoholists. The probability that the former group is a ran- 

 dom sample from the latter, when all 12 of the characters 

 dealt with are taken into account, is so small as to amount to 

 practical impossibility. The treated matings, by and large, 

 plainly give better results in a number of respects than the 

 controls. With all the critical precautions which were taken 

 with the experiments this can only mean that the treatment has 

 produced an effect. Altogether it seems impossible to explain 

 the results of these experiments on the supposition that the 

 duration of treatment prior to conception was not long enough 

 to produce any effect whatever.^ It is quite clear that the 

 validity of the present experiments can not be challenged on the 



' In this connection it is very difficult to refrain from discussing the 1916 

 results which are coming to hand as I write. Since in adequately reporting the 

 results of an experiment of this sort it is essential to present the original data in 

 detail, limits of space demand that a data limit be set on progress reports. As 

 set forth earlier, the present paper reports the results up to February 1, 1916, 

 only. It must suffice here merely to say that after 18 months continuous daily 

 alcoholic treatment of both parents we are still getting results in the offspring 

 essentially like those here reported. 



