ALCOHOLISM 



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to drink, and my observations and adduced facts seem to show 

 that a man who can drink continually for numbers of years, and 

 keep out of a lunatic asylum, a prison, or a hospital, must have 

 possessed an inherent stable mental organisation, and he in a 

 measure transmits this, the virility of the stock remaining potent 

 in spite of the ruinous habit he has acquired, although it is 

 probable that his offspring would have been stronger and fitter 

 had he been a temperate man. Drunkenness in successive genera- 

 tions would, I believe, undoubtedly lower the virility, and mental 

 and physical degeneracy of the stock would result " (1911). 



(9) It is certain that abuse of alcohol is prejudicial to the 

 race by lessening in more ways than one the nutritive capacity 

 of mothers. Thus, to refer to one aspect only, the conclusion of 

 Prof. G. von Bunge's investigation of over 2,000 families is that 

 the increasing incapacity of mothers to nurse their children 

 is referable to chronic alcoholic poisoning continued for genera- 

 tions (Die zunehmende Unfdhigkeit der Frauen, ihre Kinder zu 

 stillen, 5th edition, Munich, 1907). 



(10) The predisposition which facilitated the hyper-alcoholic 

 habit in the parent is transmitted. There may be intra-uterine 

 intoxication of the unborn child if the mother is a drunkard. 

 The tradition in favour of the abuse of alcohol may persist. 

 The conditions of nurture may also tend to induce the alcoholic 

 habit in the offspring ; but there is more. Much evidence points 

 to the conclusion that the germ-cells may (in cases of extreme 

 alcoholism) be prejudicially affected along with the body of 

 the victim. As it is often only the father who is alcoholic, it 

 follows that the poisoning influence, whether of the alcohol 

 itself or of by-products resulting from the nutritive disturb- 

 ances which its abuse provokes, may effect the germ-cells as 

 such. " This direct deterioration of the germ is a pathogenic 

 factor of the first rank " (Martius, 1905, p. 23). For if the 

 germ-cells are affected the offspring will also be affected. 



(11) There is some experimental and some general physio- 



