THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL AND OTHER ANAS- 
THETICS ON EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT 
CHARLES R. STOCKARD 
Anatomical Laboratory, Cornell University Medical School, New York City 
WITH TWENTY TEXT FIGURES 
The adult nervous system is peculiarly sensitive in its responses 
to the influence of alcohol and other anesthetics. The writer has 
found it to be equally true that alcohol and anesthetics exert a 
most striking influence over the development of the central ner- 
vous system and the organs of special sense. There is consider- 
able variation in the way in which the several aneesthetics act on 
the developing animal; some of them, such as ether and chlore- 
tone, producing effects of a general nature, while alcohol and mag- 
nesium are more localized or specific in their action. A similar 
statement is true for the actions of different anzesthetics on the 
adult body. : 
In attempting to explain the occurrence of asymmetrically 
monophthalmic, cyclopean and blind individuals among’ fish 
that had been developed in solutions containing magnesium, the 
writer advanced the hypothesis that the anesthetic property of 
Meg was the causal factor. Many reasons for such a view were put 
forward in a paper on the artificial production of these monsters 
(1909). To experimentally test this hypothesis various other 
anesthetic agents have been used and all of them to a higher or 
lower degree inhibit the development of the optic vesicles in fish 
embryos, and thus give rise to various ophthalmic defects. Alco- 
hol is most decided in its action, causing in some experiments as 
high as 90 to 98 per cent of abnormal eyes, generally cyclopean, 
which far surpasses the highest results obtained with Mg. 
The effect of alcohol on the general development of the nervous 
system is more pronounced than that of Mg, and only a few of the 
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ANATOMY, VOL. 10 No. 3. 
