138 CHARLES R. STOCKARD AND GEORGE N. PAPANICOLAOU 



ence in studying the literature of any phase of human alcohol- 

 ism. We have studied very thoroughly the literature relating 

 to the influence of alcoholism in men and women on their prog- 

 eny and, including the study of Elderton and Pearson, find it 

 to suffer from the defects which Pearl points out in the longevity 

 studies. Some of these contributions we shall discuss beyond, 

 but none give any exact statement as to the amount of alcohol 

 consumed or the length of time during which it had been con- 

 sumed or any definite information as to other conditions or the 

 general behavior of the individuals considered. The data are 

 usually collected by persons entirely untrained and incapable of 



% 



Fig. 4 On the left normal male Xo. 116, almost five years old, and on the 

 right an alcoholic female, No. 65, more than five years old that had been 

 treated with alcohol fumes for about two and one-half years. 



accumulating biological evidence. These extremely inexact 

 records are often subjected to very careful and exact mathe- 

 matical analysis which tends to give a scientific aspect to the 

 consideration, but in no way improves the quality of the incor- 

 rect data used. Unfortunately, this renders it difficult to make 

 comparisons between the responses of human alcoholics and 

 those of selected animals used in well-regulated experiments. 



Yet aside from the above, even should the data relating to the 

 influence of alcohol on human longevity justify a comparison 

 with experimental results, we feel that such a comparison could 

 not properly be made with either Pearl's observations on the 

 effect of alcohol on the mortality record of fowls or ours on the 

 life record of alcohoHzed guinea-pigs, since in both experiments 



