RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 369 
Bunge! concludes as a result of his statistical studies, ‘‘if the 
father is a drinker, the daughter loses the ability to nurse her 
child, and this ability is irretrievably lost for all future genera- 
tions. The incapacity to produce milk is no isolated phenom- 
enon. It is coupled with other symptoms of degeneration, 
especially with lack of resistance to maladies of all sorts, tuber- 
culosis, nervous troubles and dental caries. The children become 
insufficiently nourished, and the degeneration increases from 
generation to generation and finally leads, after endless suffering, 
to the extinction of the strain.” 
Although other studies have yielded results which are not 
quite so favorable to Bunge’s thesis as are the results of his own 
investigations, there is a considerable amount of additional data 
confirming the association of parental alcoholism and defective 
lactation. The interpretation of this relation, which has been 
the subject of no little controversy, is rendered more difficult 
by the influence of social factors, to say nothing of certain sources 
of statistical error due to the way in which the data are amassed. 
Bunge’s conclusions cannot be said to have received rigid proof, 
but his investigations justify a strong suspicion that alcohol may 
have been the cause of diminished lactation and various other 
defects associated with the atrophy of this function. 
Discussions of the racial degeneracy of mankind generally 
emphasize the alleged increase of insanity, feeble-mindedness 
and other forms of mental defect. But the question whether 
mental defect is increasing or decreasing is one which at present 
cannot be decided with entire certainty. Taking statistics at 
their face value we should be compelled to conclude that in most 
civilized countries mental defect is increasing quite rapidly, but 
our conclusion would rest upon an insecure foundation if we failed 
to consider probable causes of error in our statistical data. 
Let us see what statistics actually teach us: In 1880, according 
to the U. S. Census Report for that year, there were 40,942 
insane in hospitals and asylums in the United States, or 81.6 per 
1 Bunge, G. v., Die zunehmende Unfahigheit der Frauen thre Kinder zu stillen, 
6th ed., Munich, 1909. 
