For these last, alcohol has been but the touch of the trigger which has put in action their disposition towards insanity; the attack of mania, when past, leaves revealed psychic troubles, which, but for the turning of the balance by alcohol, would have remained in the latent condition, but which, once developed, remain often for a much longer time; so we see the increase in the number of these patients--occasional drunkards--keeping pace with that of chronic alcoholics. These will specially call forth the interest of the members of the Eugenic Congress. From the clinical point of view they exhibit great importance; for showing as they do all the episodic syndromes of degeneracy, all the mental forms of it may be seen--maniacal, melancholic, idiotic: insanities polymorphous or systematic, fixed ideas, monomanias connected with words or numbers, every sort of phobia, obsession, impulse, and symptomatic manifestation of great importance. When their objective lies in sexual perversion, theft, arson, murder, etc., these various states raise the most delicate questions whether from the point of view of philosophy, psychology, sociology, or forensic medicine. This class of society, in the grip of this poison, is unfortunately not sterile; their miserable descendants come to dock in the asylum; so much so that if we mass together the various elements, if we add the unfortunates permanently disabled, such as epileptics, and the increasing crowd of feeble-minded, idiotic, tuberculous children, the mind recoils aghast at the gravity of the danger. The necessity of an implacable war against alcoholism, which crowds our asylums, our hospitals, and our homes with insane persons, and sends a constant stream to our prisons and reformatories--such a war must be the principal aim of the Eugenics Congress. For long the evil genius of mankind, alcoholism has to-day laid its clutch on women, and the admission figures now show their numbers on the increase every year. Such are the lessons which may be learnt from the report of Magnan and Fillassier. EUGENICS AND OBSTETRICS. (Abstract.) By Dr. Agnes Bluhm, _Berlin._ 1. Among the agencies under social control which impair the racial qualities of future generations, an important place is taken by the Science of Medicine, especially by Obstetrics. For the increase of obstetrics increases the incapacity for bearing children of future generations. 2. The great difference in the capacity for bearing children between the primitive and civilized races depends only in part on the lessened fitness of the latter due to the increase of skilled assistance. 3. Incapacity for bearing children can be acquired; it develops, however, abundantly on the grounds of a congenital predisposition. 4. In so far as the latter is the case, obstetrics contributes towards the diffusion of this incapacity.