Applied Eugenics Part 5

Although such evidence is at first sight pertinent, it lacks much of being convincing. Much must be known about the ancestry of the drunken husband, and of the woman herself, before it can be certain that the defective children owe their defect to alcoholism rather than to heredity.

We can not undertake to review all the literature of this subject, for it fills volumes, but we shall refer to a few of the studies which are commonly cited, by the believers in the racial-poison character of alcohol, as being the most weighty.

Taav Laitinen of Helsingfors secured information from the parents of 2,125 babies, who agreed to weigh their infants once a month for the first eight months after birth, and who also furnished information about their own drinking habits. His conclusion is that the average weight of the abstainer's child is greater at birth, that these children develop more rapidly during the first eight months than do the children of the moderate drinker, and that the latter exceed in the same way the children of the heavier drinker. But a careful a.n.a.lysis of his work by Karl Pearson, whose great ability in handling statistics has thrown light on many dark places in the alcohol problem, shows[21] that Professor Laitinen's statistical methods were so faulty that no weight can be attached to his conclusions. Furthermore, he appears to have mixed various social cla.s.ses and races together without distinction; and he has made no distinction between parents, one of whom drank, and parents, both of whom drank. Yet, this distinction, as we have pointed out, is a critical one for such inquiries. Professor Laitinen's paper, according to one believer in racial poisons, "surpa.s.ses in magnitude and precision all the many studies of this subject which have proved the relation between drink and degeneracy." As a fact, it proves nothing of the sort as to race degeneracy.

Again, T. A. MacNicholl reported on 55,000 American school children, from 20,147 of whom he secured information about the parents' att.i.tude to alcoholic drinks. He found an extraordinarily large proportion (58%) of deficient and backward children in the group. But the mere bulk of his work, probably, has given it far more prestige than it deserves; for his methods are careless, his cla.s.sifications vague, his information inadequate; he seems to have dealt with a degenerate section of the population, which does not offer suitable material for testing the question at issue; and he states that many of the children drank and smoked,--hence, any defects found in them may be due to their own intemperance, rather than that of their parents. In short, Dr.

MacNicholl's data offer no help in an attempt to decide whether alcoholism is an inheritable effect.

Another supposed piece of evidence which has deceived a great many students is the investigation of Bezzola into the distribution of the birth-rate of imbeciles in Switzerland. He announced that in wine-growing districts the number of idiots conceived at the time of the vintage and carnival is very large, while at other periods it is almost _nil_. The conclusion was that excesses of drunkenness occurring in connection with the vintage and carnival caused this production of imbeciles. But aside from the unjustified a.s.sumptions involved in his reasoning, Professor Pearson has recently gone over the data and shown the faulty statistical method; that, in fact, the number of imbeciles conceived at vintage-time, in excess of the average monthly number, was only three in spite of the large numbers! Bezzola's testimony, which has long been cited as proof of the disastrous results of the use of alcohol at the time of conception, must be discarded.

Demme's plausible investigation is also widely quoted to support the belief that alcohol poisons the germ-plasm. He studied the offspring of 10 drunken and 10 sober pairs of parents, and found that of the 61 children of the latter, 50 were normal, while of the 57 progeny of the drunkards, only nine were normal. This is a good specimen of much of the evidence cited to prove that alcohol impairs the germ-plasm; it has been widely circulated by propagandists in America during recent years. Of course, its value depends wholly on whether the 20 pairs of parents were of sound, comparable stock. Karl Pearson has pointed out that this is not the case. Demme selected his children of drunkards by selecting children who came to his hospital on account of imperfect development of speech, mental defect, imbecility or idiocy. When he found families in which such defective children occurred, he then inquired as to their ancestry. Many of these children, he found, were reduced to a condition approaching epilepsy, or actually epileptic, because they themselves were alcoholic. Obviously such material can not legitimately be used to prove that the use of alcohol by parents injures the heredity of their children. The figures do not at all give the proof we are seeking, that alcohol can so affect sound germ-plasm as to lead to the production of defective children.

Dr. Bertholet made a microscopic examination of the reproductive glands of 75 chronic male alcoholics, and in 37 cases he found them more or less atrophied, and devoid of spermatozoa. Observing the same glands in non-alcoholics who had died of various chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, he found no such condition. His conclusion is that the reproductive glands are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol than any other organ. So far as is known to us, his results have never been discredited; they have, on the contrary, been confirmed by other investigators. They are of great significance to eugenics, in showing how the action of natural selection to purge the race of drunkards is sometimes facilitated in a way we had not counted, through reduced fertility due to alcohol, as well as through death due to alcohol. But it should not be thought that his results are typical, and that all chronic alcoholists become sterile: every reader will know of cases in his own experience, where drunkards have large families; and the experimental work with smaller animals also shows that long-continued inebriety is compatible with great fecundity. It is probable that extreme inebriety reduces fertility, but a lesser amount increases it in the cases of many men by reducing the prudence which leads to limited families.

In 1910 appeared the investigation of Miss Ethel M. Elderton and Karl Pearson on school children in Edinburgh and Manchester.[22] Their aim was to take a population under the same environmental conditions, and with no discoverable initial differentiation, and inquire whether the temperate and intemperate sections had children differing widely in physique and mentality. Handling their material with the most refined statistical methods, and in an elaborate way, they reached the conclusion that parental alcoholism does not markedly affect the physique or mentality of the offspring as children. Whether results might differ in later life, their material did not show. Their conclusions were as follows:

"(1) There is a higher death-rate among the offspring of alcoholic than among the offspring of sober parents. This appears to be more marked in the case of the mother than in the case of the father, and since it is sensibly higher in the case of the mother who has drinking bouts [periodical sprees] than of the mother who habitually drinks, it would appear to be due very considerably to accidents and gross carelessness and possibly in a minor degree to toxic effect on the offspring.

"Owing to the greater fertility of alcoholic parents, the net family of the sober is hardly larger than the net family of the alcoholic. [It should be remembered that the study did not include childless couples.]

"(2) The mean weight and height of the children of alcoholic parents are slightly greater than those of sober parents, but as the age of the former children is slightly greater, the correlations when corrected for age are slightly positive, i.e., there is slightly greater height and weight in the children of the sober."

"(3) The wages of the alcoholic as contrasted with the sober parent show a slight difference compatible with the employers' dislike for an alcoholic employee, but wholly inconsistent with a marked mental or physical inferiority in the alcoholic parent.

"(4) The general health of the children of alcoholic parents appears on the whole slightly better than that of sober parents. There are fewer delicate children, and in a most marked way cases of tuberculosis and epilepsy are less frequent than among the children of sober parents. The source of this relation may be sought in two directions; the physically strongest in the community have probably the greatest capacity and taste for alcohol. Further the higher death rate of the children of alcoholic parents probably leaves the fittest to survive. Epilepsy and tuberculosis both depending upon inherited const.i.tutional conditions, they will be more common in the parents of affected offspring, and probably if combined with alcohol, are incompatible with any length of life or size of family. If these views be correct, we can only say that parental alcoholism has no marked effect on filial health.

"(5) Parental alcoholism is not the source of mental defect in offspring.

"(6) The relations.h.i.+p, if any, between parental alcoholism and filial intelligence is so slight that even its sign can not be determined from the present material.

"(7) The normal visioned and normal refractioned offspring appear to be in rather a preponderance in the families of the drinking parents, the parents who have 'bouts' give intermediate results, but there is no substantial relations.h.i.+p between goodness of sight and parental alcoholism. Some explanation was sought on the basis of alcoholic homes driving the children out into the streets. This was found to be markedly the case, the children of alcoholic parents spending much more of their spare time in the streets. An examination, however, of the vision and refraction of children with regard to the time they spent in-and out-of-doors, showed no clear and definite result, the children who spent the whole or most of their spare time in the streets having the most myopia and also most normal sight. It was not possible to a.s.sert that the outdoor life was better for the sight, or that the better sight of the offspring of alcoholic parentage was due to the greater time spent outdoors.

"(8) The frequency of diseases of the eye and eyelids, which might well be attributed to parental neglect, was found to have little, if any, relation to parental alcoholism.

"To sum up, then no _marked_ relation has been found between the intelligence, physique or disease of the offspring and the parental alcoholism in any of the categories mentioned. On the whole the balance turns as often in favor of the alcoholic as of the non-alcoholic parentage. It is needless to say that we do not attribute this to the alcohol but to certain physical and possibly mental characters which appear to be a.s.sociated with the tendency to alcohol."

Of the many criticisms made of this work, most are irrelevant to our present purpose, or have been satisfactorily met by the authors. It must be said, however, that as the children examined were all school children, the really degenerate offspring of alcoholics, if any such existed, would not have been found, because they would not have been admitted to the school. Further, it is not definitely known whether the parents' alcoholism dated from before or after the birth of the child examined. Then, the report did not exactly compare the offspring of drinkers and non-drinkers, but cla.s.sified the parents as those who drank, and those who were sober; the latter were not, for the most part, teetotalers, but merely persons whose use of alcohol was so moderate that it exercised no visible bad influence on the health of the individual or the welfare of the home. Something can be said on both sides of all these objections; but giving them as much weight as one thinks necessary, the fact remains that the Elderton-Pearson investigation failed to demonstrate any racial poisoning due to alcohol, in the kind of cases where one would certainly have expected it to be demonstrated, if it existed.

Much more observation and measurement must be made before a generalization can be safely drawn, as to whether alcohol is or is not a racial poison, in the sense in which that expression is used by eugenists. It has been shown that the evidence which is commonly believed to prove beyond doubt that alcohol does injure the germ-plasm, is mostly worthless. But it must not be thought that the authors intend to deny that alcohol is a racial poison, where the dosage is very heavy and continuous. If we have no good evidence that it is, we equally lack evidence on the other side. We wish only to suggest caution against making rash generalizations on the subject which lack supporting evidence and therefore are a weak basis for propaganda.

So far as immediate action is concerned, eugenics must proceed on the basis that there is no proof that alcohol as ordinarily consumed will injure the human germ-plasm. To say this is not in any way to minify the evil results which alcohol often has on the individual, or the disastrous consequences to his offspring, euthenically. But nothing is to be gained by making an a.s.sumption of "racial poisoning," and acting on that a.s.sumption, without evidence that it is true; and the temperance movement would command more respect from genetics if it ceased to allege proof that alcohol has a directly injurious effect on the race, by poisoning the human germ-plasm, when no adequate proof exists.

How, then, can one account for the immense bulk of cases, some of which come within everyone's range of vision, where alcoholism in the parent is a.s.sociated with defect in the offspring? By a process of exclusion, we are driven to the explanation already indicated: that alcoholism may be a symptom, rather than a cause, of degeneracy. Some drunkards are drunkards, because they come of a stock that is, in a way, mentally defective; physical defects are frequently correlated in such stocks; naturally the children inherit part or all of the parental defects including, very likely, alcoholism; but the parent's alcoholism, we repeat, must not be considered the _cause_ of the child's defect. The child would have been defective in the same way, regardless of the parent's beverage.

It follows, then, as a practical consequence for eugenics, that in the light of present knowledge any campaign against alcoholic liquors would be better based on the very adequate ground of physiology and economics, than on genetics. From the narrowest point of view of genetics, the way to solve the liquor problem would be, not to eliminate drink, but to eliminate the drinker: to prevent the reproduction of the degenerate stocks and the tainted strains that contribute most of the chronic alcoholics. We do not mean to advocate this as the only proper basis for the temperance campaign, because the physiological and economic aspects are of sufficient importance to keep up the campaign at twice the present intensity.[23] But it is desirable to have the eugenic aspect of the matter clearly understood, and to point out that in checking the production of defectives in the United States, eugenics will do its share, and a big share, toward the solution of the drink problem, which is at the same time being attacked along other and equally praiseworthy lines by other people.

A number of other substances are sometimes credited with being racial poisons.

The poison of _Spirochaete pallida_, the microorganism which causes syphilis, has been widely credited with a directly noxious effect on the germ-plasm, and the statement has been made that this effect can be transmitted for several generations. On the other hand, healthy children are reported as being born to cured syphilitics. Further evidence is needed, taking care to eliminate cases of infection from the parents. If the alleged deterioration really occurs, it will still remain to be determined if the effect is permanent or an induction, that is, a change in the germ-cells which does not permanently alter the nature of the inherited traits, and which would disappear in a few generations under favorable conditions.

The case against lead is similar. Sir Thomas Oliver, in his _Diseases of Occupation_, sums up the evidence as follows:

"Rennert has attempted to express in statistical terms the varying degrees of gravity in the prognosis of cases in which at the moment of conception both parents are the subjects of lead poisoning, also when one alone is affected. The malign influence of lead is reflected upon the fetus and upon the continuation of the pregnancy 94 times out of 100 when both parents have been working in lead, 92 times when the mother alone is affected, and 63 times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. Taking seven healthy women who were married to lead workers, and in whom there was a total of 32 pregnancies, Lewin (Berlin) tells us that the results were as follows: 11 miscarriages, one stillbirth, 8 children died within the first year after their birth, four in the second year, five in the third year and one subsequent to this, leaving only two children out of 32 pregnancies as likely to live to manhood. In cases where women have had a series of miscarriages so long as their husbands worked in lead, a change of industrial occupation on the part of the husband restores to the wives normal child-bearing powers." The data of Constantin Paul, published as long ago as 1860, indicated that lead exercised an injurious effect through the male as well as the female parent. This sort of evidence is certainly weak, in that it fails to take into account the possible effects of environment; and one would do well to keep an open mind on the subject. In a recent series of careful experiments at the University of Wisconsin, Leon J. Cole has treated male rabbits with lead. He reports: "The 'leaded' males have produced as many or more offspring than normal fathers, but their young have averaged smaller in size and are of lowered vitality, so that larger numbers of them die off at an early age than is the case with those from untreated fathers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EFFECT OF LEAD AS A "RACIAL POISON"

FIG. 7.--That lead poisoning can affect the germ plasm of rabbits is indicated by experiments conducted by Leon J. Cole at the University of Wisconsin. With reference to the above ill.u.s.tration, Professor Cole writes: "Each of the photographs shows two young from the same litter, in all cases the mother being a normal (nonpoisoned) albino. In each of the litters the white young is from an albino father which received the lead treatment, while the pigmented offspring is from a normal, h.o.m.ozygous, pigmented male. While these are, it is true, selected individuals, they represent what tend to be average, rather than extreme, conditions. The albino male was considerably larger than the pigmented male; nevertheless his young average distinctly smaller in size. Note also the brighter expression of the pigmented young."]

There is, then, a suspicion that lead is a racial poison, but no evidence as yet as to whether the effect is permanent or in the nature of an induction.

This concludes the short list of substances for which there has been any plausible case made out, as racial poisons. Gonorrhea, malaria, a.r.s.enic, tobacco, and numerous other substances have been mentioned from time to time, and even ardently contended by propagandists to be racial poisons, but in the case of none of them, so far as we know, is there any evidence to support the claim. And as has been shown, in the case of the three chief so-called racial poisons, alcohol, syphilis and lead, the evidence is not great. We are thus in a position to state that, from the eugenists' point of view, the _origination_ of degeneracy, by some direct action of the germ-plasm, is a contingency that hardly needs to be reckoned with. Even in case the evidence were much stronger than it is, the damage done may only be a physiological or chemical induction, the effects of which will wear off in a few generations; rather than a radical change in the hereditary const.i.tuents of the germ-plasm. The germ-plasm is so carefully isolated and guarded that it is almost impossible to injure it, except by treatment so severe as to kill it altogether; and the degeneracy with which eugenists are called on to deal is a degeneracy which is running along from generation to generation and which, when once stopped by the cessation of reproduction, is in little danger of being originated anew through some racial poison.

Through these facts, the problem of race betterment is not only immensely simplified, but it is clearly shown to be more a matter for treatment by the biologist, acting through eugenics, than for the optimistic improver of the environment.

There is another way in which it is widely believed that some such result as a direct influence of the germ-plasm can be produced: that is through the imaginary process known as maternal impression, prenatal influence, etc. Belief in maternal impressions is no novelty. In the book of Genesis[24] Jacob is described as making use of it to get the better of his tricky father-in-law. Some animal breeders still profess faith in it as a part of their methods of breeding: if they want a black calf, for instance, they will keep a white cow in a black stall, and express perfect confidence that her offspring will resemble midnight darkness. It is easy to see that this method, if it "works," would be a potent instrument for eugenics. And it is being recommended for that reason. Says a recent writer, who professes on the cover of her book to give a "complete and intelligent summary of all the principles of eugenics":

"Too much emphasis can not be placed upon the necessity of young people making the proper choice of mates in marriage; yet if the production of superior children were dependent upon that one factor, the outlook would be most discouraging to prospective fathers and mothers, for weak traits of character are to be found in all. But when young people learn that by a conscious endeavor to train themselves, they are thereby training their unborn children, they can feel that there is some hope and joy in parentage; that it is something to which they can look forward with delight and even rapture; then they will be inspired to work hard to attain the best and highest that there is in them, leading the lives that will not only be a blessing to themselves, but to their succeeding generation."

The author of this quotation has no difficulty in finding supporters.

Many physicians and surgeons, who are supposed to be trained in scientific methods of thought, will indorse what she says. The author of one of the most recent and in many respects admirable books on the care of babies, is almost contemptuous in her disdain for those who think otherwise:

"Science wrangles over the rival importance of heredity and environment, but we women know what effects prenatal influence works on children."

"The woman who frets brings forth a nervous child. The woman who rebels generally bears a morbid child." "Self-control, cheerfulness and love for the little life breathing in unison with your own will practically insure you a child of normal physique and nerves."

Such statements, backed up by a great array of writers and speakers whom the layman supposes to be scientific, and who think themselves scientific, can not fail to influence strongly an immense number of fathers and mothers. If they are truly scientific statements, their general acceptance must be a great good.

But think of the misplaced effort if these widespread statements are false!

Is there, or is there not, a short cut to race betterment? Everyone interested in the welfare of the race must feel the necessity of getting at the truth in the case; and the truth can be found only by rigorously scientific thought.

Let us turn to the observed facts. This sample is taken from the health department of a popular magazine, quite recently issued:

"Since birth my body has been covered with scales strikingly resembling the surface of a fish. My parents and I have expended considerable money on remedies and specialists without deriving any permanent benefit. I bathe my entire body with hot water daily, using the best quality of soap. The scales fall off continually. My brother, who is younger than myself, is afflicted with the same trouble, but in a lesser degree. My sister, the third member of the family, has been troubled only on the knees and abdomen. My mother has always been quite nervous and susceptible to any unusual mental impression. She believes that she marked me by craving fish, and preferring to clean them herself. During the prenatal life of my brother, she worried much lest she might mark him in the same way. In the case of my sister she tried to control her mind."[25]

Another is taken from a little publication which is devoted to eugenics.[26] As a "horrible example" the editor gives the case of Jesse Pomeroy, a murderer whom older readers will remember. His father, it appears, worked in a meat market. Before the birth of Jesse, his mother went daily to the shop to carry a luncheon to her husband, and her eyes naturally fell upon the b.l.o.o.d.y carcases hung about the walls.

Inevitably, the sight of such things would produce b.l.o.o.d.y thoughts in the mind of the unborn child!

These are extreme cases; we quote from a medieval medical writer another case that carries the principle to its logical conclusion: A woman saw a Negro,--at that time a rarity in Europe. She immediately had a sickening suspicion that her child would be born with a black skin. To obviate the danger, she had a happy inspiration--she hastened home and washed her body all over with warm water. When the child appeared, his skin was found to be normally white--except between the fingers and toes, where it was black. His mother had failed to wash herself thoroughly in those places!

Of course, few of the cases now credited are as gross as this, but the principle involved remains the same.

We will take a hypothetical case of a common sort for the sake of clearness: the mother receives a wound on the arm; when her child is born it is found to have a scar of some sort at about the same place on the corresponding arm. Few mothers would fail to see the result of a maternal impression here. But how could this mark have been transmitted?

This is not a question of the transmission of acquired characters through the germ-plasm, or anything of that sort, for the child was already formed when the mother was injured. One is obliged, therefore, to believe that the injury was in some way transmitted through the placenta, the only connection between the mother and the unborn child; and that it was then reproduced in some way in the child.

Here is a situation which, examined in the cold light of reason, puts a heavy enough strain on the credulity. Such an influence can reach the embryo only through the blood of the mother. Is it conceivable to any rational human being, that a scar, or what not, on the mother's body can be dissolved in her blood, pa.s.s through the placenta into the child's circulation, and then gather itself together into a definite scar on the infant's arm?

There is just as much reason to expect the child to grow to resemble the cow on whose milk it is fed after birth, as to expect it to grow to resemble its mother, because of prenatal influence, as the term is customarily used, for once development has begun, the child draws nothing more than nourishment from its mother.