496 PROF. B. C. A. WINDLE ON TEEA.TOLOQICAL EVIDENCE 



(1) There are diseases due to a specific infection, probably 

 always bacterial in its nature. Small-pox and other similar 

 diseases, with which the foetus may be infected by the mother, 

 are of this kind. The commonest and best example is, however, 

 that of syphilis, which may be communicated to the embryo by 

 its mother, or to the embryo by the father, and by the embryo, 

 in turn, to its previously uninfected mother. Diseases of this 

 kind have no bearing whatsoever upon the present question, 

 though it is sometimes imagined that they have. 



(2) There are conditions of the embryo induced by the presence 

 of a poison, not bacterial in its nature, which may be present in 

 the parental organism at the time of impregnation. To this 

 group may possibly be assigned the cases of early intra-uterine 

 death or congenital feebleness of the embryo, which, as has been 

 already stated, are caused by lead-poisoning in the male parent. 

 Those cases, also, where feebleness of mind or body in the child 

 seems to be the result of chronic alcoholism in the parent or 

 parents. In connection with this subject I cannot refrain from 

 mentioning the remarkable statements of Dr. Langdon Down* 

 as to the effects of intoxication in the parents on the offspring. 

 The case which he gives is that of a child (female) aged fi.ve years, 

 without any deformity, but only 22 inches in height, and unable 

 to speak. The first child of the family was healthy. Prior to 

 the procreation of the second the father took to drink, the 

 ofii'spring dying at the age of three years, and during its life 

 resembling that described above. The third was the child first 

 mentioned ; and the father was drunk when he procreated it. 

 The fourth was a miscarriage. At this period the father became 

 again a sober man, and his wife had subsequently five perfectly 

 normal children. The above ease, the author says, is of great 

 interest, because it adds another to a group of cases which have 

 come under his observation, of arrested development arising from 

 the intoxication of one or both of the progenitors at the time of 

 the procreative act. The whole group of cases has presented 

 features of such close resemblance that it is difficult to avoid the 

 conclusion that there was some unity of cause, and careful in- 

 vestigation has elicited facts bearing on the etiology of these cases 

 having a close parallelism to the circumstances which he believes 

 to have been potential in this. He has known some of these 



* Traus. Path. Soc. xx. 419. 



