Part 10

+The frequency of syphilis and other venereal diseases in town and country+ is illustrated in Table C 86, which gives the result of the enquiries of the Prussian Government on the 30th April, 1900, and Table C 87 after Schwiening, on +the frequency of sexual diseases among military recruits+. Also Table C 88 which gives the +frequency of delirium tremens, epilepsy, and general paralysis+ in the +Prussian lunatic asylums+, points in the same direction by the great differences shown in the frequency of general paralysis in the different institutions. This table, at the same time, indicates what is also supported by other observations, that the +frequency and intensity of harmful influences through alcohol+ are much +greater in towns than in the country+; this may be partly because in cities there is a greater and more regular abuse of alcoholic beverages than in the country, partly because town-life induces a greater susceptibility to alcoholic poisoning than country life (less intense metabolism with sedentary occupations).

[Sidenote: C 89-90]

+Injury to the reproductive function through alcohol+. It has been known for a long time that drunkards are frequently sterile. This must be attributed to the fact that the testicles of drunkards become to a great extent atrophied. The condition is shown in Figure C 89 by R. Weichselbaum,[B] representing a section through the testicle of a drunkard. Figure C 90 which shows a section through a normal testicle, enables even the layman to observe the atrophy of the characteristic glandular tissue of the testicle. Weichselbaum has up to now found that in fifty-four cases, without exception, in which alcoholism had been proved, this atrophy could be demonstrated to a greater or less degree. In thirty of these cases the subject was so young that senile atrophy was out of the question. The abuse of alcohol is not the only harmful influence which is able to induce such atrophy of the testicles, but chronic alcoholism acts with special intensity. Very similar results to those of Weichselbaum have been obtained by Bertholet (Zentralbl. f. allg. Pathologie 20 Bd. 1909) in 37 out of 39 habitual drunkards. They agree with observations on the vesiculae seminales of drunkards by Simmonds, who found that in 61% of the cases examined the spermatozoa were absent or dead. It is a permissible assumption that a poison which can cause the total atrophy of the sexual glands may, in an earlier stage, have adversely influenced in respect to quality the function of those organs.

[Footnote B: Verhandlungen der Deutschen Patholog: Gesellschaft, 14th day, Jena, Fischer, 1910, page 234.]

[Sidenote: C 91]

[Sidenote: C 92]

+Alcohol and Degeneration+, from the tables on the alcohol question by Gruber and Kraepelin, Munich; Lehmann; contains the well-known statistics of Demme, Bunge, and Arrivée. Table C 92 adds to the summary of the statistical observations of Demme, further details of the +kind of abnormalities+ which were +observed in children of drunkards+. Representing, as they do, exceptionally bad cases with a high degree of degeneration, one may doubt whether and in how far congenital hereditary inferiority of the parents may have had its influence.

[Sidenote: C 93]

Figure C 93 contains the well-known result of v. Bunge's investigations on the +influence of paternal alcoholism on the suckling capacity of the daughters+. The varying frequency of the habitual consumption of alcohol and of drunkenness proper of the father in the two groups of families is most striking. Official investigations of this question on a large scale are urgently called for.

[Sidenote: C 94]

Figure C 94 dealing with the +interconnection of tuberculosis, nervous diseases and psychoses of the progeny and the alcohol consumption of the father+, is derived from Bunge's investigations. It is worthy of notice that he endeavoured to eliminate from his statistics all families in whom hereditary diseases could be traced previously.

[Sidenote: C 95]

Table C 95 contains a summary of T. Laitinen's +experiments on animals with small quantities of alcohol+. The degree of injury to the progeny supposed to be produced by even a minimum quantity of alcohol (corresponding to about one-third of pint of beer for a man) is astounding. Repetition of these experiments on a large scale and with the strictest care would be most desirable here also.

[Sidenote: C 96]

Table C 96 also refers to reports by T. Laitinen.[C] +It deals with the effect of alcohol on the progeny in man+. Unfortunately Laitinen's paper is so confused and inexact that it is impossible for the reader safely to draw conclusions from it. His personal observations are mixed up with those gathered by means of inquiry sheets circulated by him in such a way that one cannot make out how he has arrived at his weights at birth and mortality. Information is lacking with regard to the nutrition of the children, their age at the conclusion of the investigations, the length of marriage, the rapidity of birth sequence and so on. It is, therefore, indispensable to await the more detailed report before Laitinen's information can be made use of.

[Footnote C: Internat. Monatschrift z. Erforschung des Alkoholismus, Juli, 1910.]

[Sidenote: C 97]

Bezzola has sent in in a modified form the data which he presented to the Eighth International Congress against Alcoholism in Vienna in 1901, on the +effect of acute intoxication on the origin of feeble-mindedness+. With their help the curve on Figure C 97 has been constructed, showing the distribution of illegitimate births in Switzerland during the different months of the year from Bezzola's data and the corresponding curve of the births of mentally eminent individuals (taken from Brockhaus' encyclopædia.) The author supplies the following comments:--

"+Comparison between the general birth curve and the corresponding one for the birth of feeble-minded children+."

The casual observation at the registration of the personal history of feeble-minded individuals that 50 per cent. of the birth dates fall within only fourteen weeks of the year (New Year, carnival, and wine harvest) has aroused the desire to deal with the seasonal incidence of the begetting of the feeble-minded on the basis of as much material as possible. For this purpose the author's census of feeble-minded school children, which took place in the year 1897, and referred to the years 1886-90 inclusive, seemed specially suited. Originally (in 1901) a curve was plotted in which all the 8,186 feeble-minded and idiotic children were included whose exact birthdays were known, and this curve was compared with the total curve for that period. (Schweiz. Statistik 112 Liefg.) The latter was constructed in the following manner from the whole number of births (934,619) which occurred in these eleven years:--The general daily average was taken as 100, and the daily average for each month was expressed proportionately. Thus numbers above 100 show a daily birth frequency above the average, while for numbers below 100 the reverse is the case. The curve for the 8,136 feeble-minded persons was constructed in a similar way, and thus a comparison with the general population producing them was made possible. Subsequently (1910-11), in order to secure homogeneous material, the first and last years were left out, since by including them, owing to the non-agreement of the school year and the astronomical year, the earlier months (January-April) were much weighted. By this restriction of the material dealt with the number of feeble-minded is reduced to 7,759, but the material for each separate year is more homogeneous. Distributed between 2,922 days (eight years), the daily production of the feeble-minded is 2.648, the corresponding total number of births of the years 1882-89 ls 677,083, or 231.7 per day. 1.14 per cent. of all births are included in the figure for the feeble-minded. If one treats the total number of births for each month as well as the number of births of feeble-minded according to the method described above, and used by the Federal Statistical Bureau, two curves are produced which diverge considerably from each other in particular months. On the whole the curve for the feeble-minded (thick line) is flatter than the curve for the total. Especially striking are the drop in May and June (corresponding to the procreation period from the 25th July to the 23rd September) and two peaks rising above the "total" curve. One of these is slight, yet distinct. It refers to the months of birth, July and August, corresponding with the procreation period from the 24th September to the 24th November. More conspicuous is the second peak of the curve for the feeble-minded from October to December, otherwise a time poor in births. The centre of the corresponding period of procreation (25th December to 26th March) is in February (carnival). This seems to confirm the suspicion that during the wine harvest and carnival an increased procreation of feeble-minded occurs (procreation during drunkenness?).

We cannot suppress the remark that the fluctuations of the curve for the feeble-minded are much too small to admit of the drawing of an ætiological conclusion, but the fluctuations of the intelligence curve and the illegitimate curve partly exceed the limits of probable error. The peaks of both birth curves in February, correspond to a peak in the procreation curve in May. Perhaps one may attribute them to the existence of a remnant of a period of "heat" (or a rutting season) in man.

[Sidenote: C 98]

+Lead.+ Whereas the +germ cells+ are well protected against many harmful influences from without which affect the soma of the mother, they +and the foetus produced from them suffer considerably from+ some. Amongst their deadliest enemies are +certain poisons+, and +notorious in this respect is lead+. Table C 98 gives two sets of statistics on this point, they justify the law in Germany, and in other States, forbidding female labour to deal with lead and lead-containing materials. Paul's figures, showing that lead poisoning of the father is also extremely adverse to the production of a healthy progeny, are remarkable.

[Sidenote: C 99]

+Female Labour.+ A baneful influence on reproduction is brought to bear by the growing quantity of professional female labour away from home and by the economic emancipation of women. Evidence of this is given in Table C 99--"+female labour and child mortality+"--the data of which are taken from Prinzing's work. Infant mortality is higher the larger the percentage of females employed in factories during the child-bearing period. This is partly due to interference with breast-feeding and partly to the unfavourable influence on pregnancy.

[Sidenote: C 100]

Dr. Agnes Bluhm has given in Figure C 100 "+Female Labour and Reproductive Activity+," the statistics of Roger and Thiraux, as well as the results of the investigation of the Imperial Statistical Office on the "Relationship of illness and deaths in the Local Invalidity Fund for Leipzig and surroundings." Dr. Bluhm gives the following explanation: "The top figure on the left is based on material of the Local Invalidity Fund for Leipzig and surroundings, dealing with over a quarter of a million of women of child-bearing age. The distinction between obligatory and voluntary members makes possible the estimate of the +influence of work continued up to the time of confinement+, because the voluntary members receive the same weekly payments during confinement as the obligatory ones, and, consequently, a woman has no object in joining the voluntary insurance scheme except in order to secure rest before confinement, which they procure for themselves at their own expense and with the loss of their wages. (At that time the compulsory support during time of pregnancy did not exist.) It is to be noted that the voluntary members show ten times as many confinements as the obligatory ones."

"The left hand figure at the top shows that the women who work up to the time of confinement fall ill during their pregnancy twice as often, and have six or seven times as many miscarriages and premature births and 1.28 times as many cases of death in child-bed, as those who stop work for a more or less extended period previous to their delivery."

"The frequency of illness after childbirth is in both categories of women almost the same; but the duration of the illness beyond the period for which the legal subvention provides (13, 26, or 34 weeks respectively) is much greater in the case of the obligatory members who do not spare themselves before their delivery."

"Left hand figure at the bottom--the researches were made by Roger and Thiraux in a maternity home. A comparison is made between the women who entered the home only at the beginning of childbirth and those who entered during the last month of pregnancy or sooner. Premature birth occurs in nearly one-third of the cases among the former, but among the latter only one-eighth.

"Right hand figure at the bottom--dealing with the same material as the left hand figure below compares the weight at birth of the first, second and later born. The average weight of the former is 300 g. and that of the latter 341 g. higher with mothers who cease work two or three months before delivery, than with those who worked up to the last. Possibly this expresses in the main the different duration of pregnancy. The importance of the birth weight of a child for its further development is not to be underrated."

"The top figure on the right shows that the importance of the adverse influence of female labour on the race, shown in the above figures, is growing, because there is an increase of employment amongst married women. Simon's figures show that the manufacturing industries, which in 1907 employed by themselves two million female hands, the number of married women has increased by almost 200,000 during the last twelve years. In agriculture, in which four and a half million females find their main occupation, the share of the married women is much greater still."

"The increase of married female labour being intimately connected with the development of our economic life, which cannot be deliberately influenced, the demand for a Motherhood Insurance for all female labourers of any kind, and for the extension of the legal time of stoppage of work before childbirth to at least four weeks, follows as a practical result of the facts stated above."

Dr. Bluhm's repeated assertion, which is regarded by many as a dogma, that economic conditions cannot be deliberately influenced (+i.e.+, that they are of the character of a law of nature) must not remain uncontradicted as a principal. It is absolutely unproved, though the difficulty of influencing our economic life cannot be denied; the economic order has been created by man and +must+ be altered if it proves harmful for the race.

[Sidenote: C 101]

The adverse influence of female labour on the progeny is shown from a somewhat different point of view in Table C 101--"+premature births and abortions in different callings+." The most serious fact shown here is that a low birth rate may frequently be found in conjunction with a high rate for miscarriage and premature birth; as the compiler of these statistics points out, this conjunction is most apparent in those callings which demand frequent intercourse with the public, such as domestic service, that is to say in cases where pregnancy is particularly inconvenient. Probably in these cases artificial prevention of pregnancy goes hand in hand with the procuring of abortion!

Race-hygiene does not aim at an indiscriminate motherhood insurance of married and unmarried mothers, but it aims at the economic subvention and encouragement of legitimate fertility of healthy and able parents, connected with, and rendered possible by, a reduction of female labour away from the home. Marriage is one of the most important hygienic institutions for the individual as well as for the race, and it is folly to allow its decay and to replace it by substitutes.

[Sidenote: C 102]

+The importance of marriage for the health to married persons+ is shown by figure C 102--"+condition with regard to marriage and mortality in Prussia, 1894-97+," as given in Prinzing's book. That we have to deal here with an actual favourable influence of marriage, and not with a selection of the healthy at the time of marriage, is proved by the fact that the low death rate of the married is maintained through all age classes and that the widowed and divorced show throughout the highest death rate.

[Sidenote: C 103]

"+Condition with regard to marriage and mortality, cases of death from tuberculosis+," after Weinberg, also confirms with regard to tuberculosis the favourable influence of marriage on the health of men. With women the mortality from tuberculosis up to the age of 60 is lowest among the unmarried. Pregnancy and suckling act here adversely, but by far the worst position is also held here by widows and divorced women.

[Sidenote: C 104-105]

The advantage of marriage for the progeny is made evident in Figure C 104--"+mortality of illegitimate children in different European states+", and in Figure C 105 dealing with the "+survival of the legitimate and illegitimate children in Berlin in 1885+." After five years there are still alive more than 60% of the legitimate, but only 40% of the illegitimate children. The higher mortality of the latter is by no means a purifying process of weeding, but the expression of greater sickliness which permanently harms the surviving also. The division of labour between man and wife, with reference to the care of the offspring, is one of Nature's institutions which is of the greatest advantage for parents as well as children.

[Sidenote: C 106-107]

+Inbreeding and the Crossing of Races.+ On the whole with mankind inbreeding is viewed with fear, and justly so, in view of our customary carelessness with regard to the physical and mental conditions of those who contract marriage. +If blood relations have similar pathological conditions or pre-dispositions to illness or degeneracy, the progeny which results from their union is endangered to a particularly high degree.+ Our collection brings as an example of this in Table C 106--the pedigree of the celebrated Don Carlos. The bad inheritance of Johanna the Mad asserts itself to a lesser degree yet quite perceptibly also in the children of Max. II. Table C 107--the children of Maximilian and his cousin Maria of Spain; undoubtedly the Emperor Rudolf II. was mentally diseased. Also Charles V. and his son Philip II. were abnormal characters.

[Sidenote: C 108]

+Blood relationship of the parents and health of the children+, which v. d. Velden has prepared from Riffel's family tables, also speaks for the harmfulness of inbreeding. The offspring of blood relations are emphatically weaker and sicklier than those of persons related distantly or not at all.

[Sidenote: C 109]

The harm of inbreeding amongst the pathological is also illustrated by the large Table 222 (exhibited by Schüle). Pedigrees from wine-growing districts in the centre of Baden; against this it may be taken as proved that inbreeding in itself between the healthy and fit is not harmful. Animal breeders (as well as plant cultivators) make an extensive use of it with the view to the cultivation of certain hereditary characteristics.

[Sidenote: C 110]

We show in Table C 110, after de Chapeaurouge, the +pedigree of Belvidere+, an animal which, in spite of close inbreeding, was distinguished by excellent qualities, and by whom, out of his own daughter, another sire of the highest rank was produced.

[Sidenote: C 111]

After long-continued and very close inbreeding, even with a faultless condition of the germ plasm, the decrease of vitality and fertility of the progeny asserts itself. Important evidence for this is given by Georg. H. Shull in his exhibition of +cross-fertilized, self-fertilized and hybridized maize+ (Exhibit No. C 111). Shull makes the following comments: "Results of inbreeding with maize--crossing between different races or genotypes, if not too distantly related, results in a progeny which excels its parents in vitality, whereas crosses between individuals belonging to the same genotype engender no increase of vitality as compared with the parents."

In maize, and presumably in most other plants and animals in which cross-fertilization is the rule, all individuals are usually complicated hybrids between different varieties of genotype. They owe their vigorous constitution to this hybrid nature.

"The result of self-fertilization or of close inbreeding is that the hybrid nature diminishes in degree. The stock is reduced to a homozygotic condition, and is thus deprived of the stimulus which lies in the hybrid condition."

"When two given genotypes are crossed, the first hybrid generation is possessed of the greatest vigour. Even the second generation shows much less vitality, and this decrease continues with the third and later generations. But each succeeding generation differs less from its predecessor than the latter differed from its own parents. As soon as the stock has become a pure line, inbreeding produces no further weakening."

"The top row of the exhibited collection of maize cobs (large cobs with many grains) is derived from a family in which for five generations self-fertilization has been prevented by using mixed pollen. These conditions approach those prevailing in an ordinary field."

"The middle row of maize cobs (small cobs with few grains) comes from families of the same derivation as the first row; but for five generations they have been self-fertilized. Each one has characters which the others do not possess. They are almost pure bred, and continued self-fertilization produces no further adverse influence. The cob, quite to the right, without grains, has pistils so short that they do not project from the husks. This genotype must, therefore, be fertilized artificially."

"The lowest row (the largest cobs with the most grains) comes from families which have been created by the crossing of plants belonging to different genotypes, the relationship in which case is indicated by the lines which connect this row with the middle row."

"The following harvests of grain were made in the year 1910:--

Self-fertilization prevented (average of nine families) 53.5 hi pro ha. Self-fertilized (average of ten families) 25.3 " " " F1 hybrid (average of six families) 59.2 " " " F2 hybrid (average of seven families) 38.8 " " "

[Sidenote: C 112-114]

It is well-known to what degree +inbreeding+ is practised in +reigning families+. We show as an example for this, Chart C 112, the +pedigree of the Archduchess Maria de los Dolores of Tuscany+, exhibited by Dr. Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz, and Chart C 113 of the same exhibitor, +pedigree of Ptolemäus X+. Soter II. (Lathros), and Chart C 114, +pedigree of the celebrated Cleopatra+. Though with Ptolemäus X. the effect of sexual reproduction in bringing about new combinations of hereditary units was very limited, since the couple, Ptolemäus V. Epiphanes and Cleopatra Syra having produced all the germ cells from which he developed, he appears, nevertheless, to have been a perfectly normal being. In his granddaughter Cleopatra certainly much "extraneous blood" circulated.

[Sidenote: C 115]