384 ANIMAL BIOLOGY 



Several of the animals resulting from alcoholized parents 

 were bred together, and although they had themselves 

 not received any alcohol, they produced a high per- 

 centage of weak and defective offspring. Apparently 

 alcohol produced an effect on the germ cells that caused 

 a hereditary weakness in the offspring that was handed 

 on after the original cause was removed. The parent 

 animals showed little effects of alcohol. There was no 

 transmission of an acquired character, but the production 

 of a germinal variation by the action of alcohol on the 

 germ plasm. 



These results make it probable that in human beings 

 also alcohol may be a potent cause of defective inheritance, 

 as it has long been regarded by many physicians and 

 physiologists. Idiocy, feeblemindedness and epilepsy 

 are found with exceptional frequency among the children 

 of people addicted to alcohol. On the other hand, chronic 

 alcoholism is in a large proportion of cases the result of 

 inherited defects, so that the children of alcoholics may 

 show weakness because their parents were defective quite 

 aside from their alcoholism. What starts defective 

 strains of humanity in the first place we do not know, 

 but it is probable that much of the mischief must be laid 

 to the score of alcohol. 



It is of the highest importance to our race that we abolish 

 the sources of our hereditary feeblemindedness, insanity, 

 epilepsy and criminality. It is also of the highest impor- 

 tance and an imperative social duty to prevent the propaga- 

 tion of the hereditary defectives that we have. This class, 

 speaking generally, is unusually prolific. Although infant 

 mortality is high among them, it is the opinion of many 

 of the foremost students of the problem that our defectives 

 are on the increase. 



The feebleminded as a rule are remarkably prolific. 



