CHAPTER XIV

THE RACIAL POISONS: LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS

The term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst substances known to be poisonous to the individual, those which injure the germ-plasm: and amongst substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself, we must distinguish those which may also poison her unborn child. Alcohol is pre-eminently _the_ racial poison, thus defined, and I plead for its recognition as primarily a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most important aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of Professor Forel will not lightly question this assertion.

The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very large. Amongst them must theoretically be included all abortifacient drugs. There are also various poisons of disease to be included in this category. Later pages must be devoted to what is by far the most important of these. But we may observe in passing that such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism has especial significance for the student of race-culture since, as he knows, its poisons circulating in the blood of an expectant mother may not only injure her own heart for life but may pass through the placenta and deform the valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result loosely described as “congenital heart disease.” The conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever, then, are conditions from which the expectant mother, even more than the ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. But this is of minor importance. We may here refer, however, to one or two striking cases, especially since they bear in some degree upon social and individual duty.

=The racial influence of lead.=--In the first place, it is necessary to draw attention to a really notable racial poison, viz., lead.

Says Sir Thomas Oliver,[75] “Lead destroys the reproductive powers of both men and women, but its special influence upon women during pregnancy is the cause of a great destruction of human life.” It may be said that in a sense the production of miscarriages and still-births, and also of infant mortality by lead, does not concern the student of race-culture. Nevertheless some of these children survive. Says Sir Thomas Oliver: “I have seen both cretinism and imbecility in infants in whom, as there could have been no possible influence of alcohol, and presumably none of syphilis, the occupation of one or other parent as a lead worker must have determined the imperfectly developed nervous system of the child.” Later he says (page 202): “Salpétrière and Bicêtre are large hospitals in Paris set aside for the reception and treatment of nervous diseases. The experience of the physicians of these institutions is unrivalled. One of the physicians, M. Roques, speaking of the degenerates found in these hospitals, says that slowly induced lead poisoning on the part of both parents or in one or other of them is not only a cause of repeated abortions, high percentage of still-births and high death-rate of infants, but is the cause of convulsions, imbecility, and idiocy in many of the children who survive the first year of existence. Of nineteen children born to parents who were lead workers, Rennert found that one child was still-born and that seventeen were macrocephalic. In his studies upon hereditary degeneration and idiocy, Bourneville places house-painters in the unenviable first rank of the occupations followed by parents of mentally weak children. Out of eighty-seven cases relating to unhealthy trades, fifty-one were connected with white lead in some form or another, while syphilis was only responsible for nineteen.”

This racial influence of lead is by no means generally recognised--even by Royal Commissioners. Its parallelism with the case of alcohol is striking. We may note, for instance, that paternal lead-poisoning, like paternal alcoholism, can cause degeneration in the offspring, if not indeed death before or shortly after birth. To quote Oliver again: “Taking seven healthy women who were married to lead workers, and in whom there was a total of thirty-two pregnancies, Lewin tells us that the results were as follows: eleven miscarriages, one still-birth, eight children died within the first year after birth, four in the second year, five in the third, and one subsequent to this, leaving only two children out of thirty-two pregnancies, as likely to live to manhood. In cases where women have a series of miscarriages so long as their husbands worked in lead, a change of industrial occupation on the part of the husbands restores to the wives normal child-bearing powers.” According to the statistical enquiry of Rennert, the malign influence of lead is exerted upon the next generation, ninety-four times out of one hundred when both parents have been working in lead, ninety-two times when the mother alone is affected, and sixty-three times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. Here, then, as in the case of alcohol, the racial poison may act either through the father or through the mother, but especially through the mother. The importance of the demonstration as regards the father in the case of both poisons is that it means a poisoning of the paternal germ-cell. The facts may be commended to those extremists, so much more Weismannian than Weismann, who regard the germ-cells as existing in a universe of their own, wholly unrelated to the rest of existence.

Another extremely interesting parallel between these two racial poisons may be noted. It is found, according to Professor Oliver, that “while following a healthy occupation these women, after having frequently miscarried when working in lead factories, would have two or three living healthy children, but circumstances necessitating the return of these women to town, and resumption of work in the lead factory, they in each successive pregnancy again miscarried.” He then quotes the following most remarkable case: “Mrs. K., aged thirty-four, had four children before going into the factory and two children after. She then had six miscarriages in succession, when she came under my care in the Royal Infirmary, having become the victim of plumbism and having lost the power in her arms and legs. She made a slow but good recovery and did not return to the lead works. In her next pregnancy she went to full term and gave birth to a living child.”

We see here that, as is also true in the case of alcoholism, the germinal tissue itself may escape or at any rate may recover from the effects of chronic poisoning of the individual who is its host. The race is more resistant than the individual. If, however, the poisoning continues whilst a new individual is being formed--that is to say, during pregnancy--that new individual succumbs, and indeed is far more gravely affected than its mother. Such a pregnant woman presents three distinct living objects for our study. Her own body is one: and this is already developed. It has some measure of resistance to the poison but is gravely affected. The embryo is the second; it is developing and because developing is susceptible. It is usually killed before birth. The third is the germ-plasm or the race, and this, as we have seen, may withstand the poison so well that when the poisoning is discontinued healthy children may be produced from it. Undoubtedly the case is the same as regards alcohol. The race or germ-plasm is most resistant, the developing individual is least resistant, and the adult individual--that is to say, the mother--occupies an intermediate position in this respect.

This parallelism, which has escaped previous observers, may be pointed out and its remarkable interest and significance suggested as a definite advance upon the absurd view that the germ-plasm is incapable of being poisoned. On the contrary, we know that many poisons will kill it outright, so that sterility results. But its high degree of resistance is a fact of great interest. Doubtless Dr. Archdall Reid's acute explanation of it is correct: namely, that natural selection would tend to evolve a resistant germ-plasm. Dr. Reid will, I think, be interested to notice in these remarkable observations on lead-poisoning a conspicuous illustration of this resistance.

Our business here, however, is with the practical issue. This fortunately is plain, nor are there the same difficulties of vested interests which arise in the case of alcohol. Lead-poisoning must be ended in the interests of race-culture and the essential wealth of the nation, or, if it is to be continued, it must at least have its clutches kept clear of parenthood.

=The possible racial influence of narcotics.=--Alcohol is of course a narcotic poison, or, more precisely still, a narcotic-irritant poison, but here we may briefly refer to the possible racial influence of certain other poisons. There is, for instance, the case, noted on p. 212, of the disastrous racial consequences of the cocaine habit. The matter demands only a paragraph, since for the present, at least, it is of small general importance, and since we must beware of going beyond the facts; but when once the idea of race-culture has reached the popular and professional mind--the latter at present frequently feeding the pregnant woman with alcohol, as we all know--the whole question of narcomania will have to be looked at from this aspect, and the measure of danger in particular cases will then be ascertained. It is probably safe to assume, however, that, on the whole, alcohol will be found to stand somewhat apart from other narcotics, and for the reason that it is not a pure narcotic but also an irritant. Thus, to take the case of opium, it will probably be very difficult and, one may hope, impossible to show that, shall we say, opium smoking or eating has an injurious racial influence where it is practised. Here we have a narcotic which is not an irritant. The individual may recover perfectly from its abuse, as he may often fail to recover from the abuse of alcohol, since this poison leaves permanent changes in the brain, and elsewhere, dependent upon the fact that it is not merely a narcotic but also a local irritant. The action of a pure narcotic on the germ-plasm as compared with the action of a narcotic which is also an irritant may afford a parallel. The abuse of opium by the expectant mother (see p. 212) is not of the same order: it means simply dosing a _very_ small baby with opium.

=Tobacco and the race.=--The poisonous compounds absorbed from tobacco smoke are of interest in this connection. The question as to the proportion of nicotine included amongst them is immaterial here. It suffices to know, as we do, that certain substances, doubtless including some proportion of nicotine, rapidly absorbed into the blood by the smoker, are poisons to the individual body. The familiar fact of the acquirement of immunity affects in no degree the statement as to the toxic character of these substances.

No one but the fanatic would venture to say that any racial degeneration can be traced to tobacco-smoking. It would be hard to prove the existence of any injury thus inflicted upon the children of the father who is a smoker, though the question of the acquirement of immunity is not without relevance here. The immunising substances or anti-toxins which are doubtless produced in the smoker's blood may protect the germ-plasm which he bears as well as his own body.

But in the case of the expectant mother there is more warrant for offering an opinion even in the absence hitherto of definite evidence. Apart from any opinion as to the propriety of smoking by women in general, there is a definite issue in the case of the expectant mother. A very young child is now being exposed to the poisons of tobacco smoke, and if we are right in passing laws to prevent this poisoning in the case of the urchin of eight years (who is really, of course, eight years and nine months old), what shall we say regarding the unborn child who is only eight months old? I have observed that the expectant mother may have her liking for tobacco replaced by violent dislike during pregnancy.

=The poison of syphilis.=--Brief mention must here be made of syphilis as a racial poison. Sooner or later the eugenic campaign must and will face this question, about which a murderous silence is now maintained. No other disease can rival syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. But it is no crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and their children: no crime against the laws of our little lawgivers, but a heinous outrage against Nature's decrees. When, at last, our laws are based on Nature's laws, criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to.

The lay reader should acquaint himself with the play of Brieux, _Les Avariés_. The student may be referred to Forel's _Sexual Question_, Dr. C. F. Marshall's _Syphilology and Venereal Diseases_, and his article, “Alcohol and Syphilis” in the _British Journal of Inebriety_, January, 1908.

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This chapter and the last do not profess to do more than indicate the field of eugenics which the term racial poisons suggests. Our business in the present volume is, if possible, to see eugenics whole: to treat of this new science adequately is not for one author or one generation. It is earnestly to be hoped that the medical profession will speedily take up this question of the racial poisons. Already the profession is beginning to become the great instrument of _individual hygiene_: and every year will enhance the importance of this work, as compared with the cure of disease. Now negative eugenics is substantially _racial hygiene_: and the next great epoch in the evolution of medicine and the medical profession will be the enrolment of its knowledge and influence in the cause of racial hygiene. May this book do a little to hasten that day.

The two next chapters are designed to introduce that aspect of our subject which may be called National Eugenics, and especially with reference to decadence. Here is a matter which appeals to minds of type and training often very different from the typical medical mind. But it is part of one's purpose to show, if possible, that the historian must become a eugenist, just as the physician must, for eugenics needs and claims the work and help of both.