=Progressive Increase in Death-Rate of Offspring of Inebriate Women.--=In an investigation on the effects of parental alcoholism on the offspring, Sullivan (_Journal of Mental Science_, Vol. 45, 1899) gives some important figures. To avoid other complications he chose female drunkards in whom no other degenerative features were evident. He found that among these the percentage of abortions, still-births and deaths of infants before their third year was 55.8 per cent. as against 23.9 per cent. in sober mothers. In answer to the objection that this high percentage may be due merely to neglect, and not to impairment of the fetus by alcoholism, he points out the fact based on the history of the successive births, that there was a progressive increase in the death-rate of offspring in proportion to the length of time the mother had been an inebriate, thus: ------------------------------------------------------------- |No. of|Per cent.|Per cent. dying| Total |cases |born dead| before 3 |percentage -----------------|------|---------|---------------|---------- First births | 80 | 6.2 | 27.5 | 33.7 Second births | 80 | 11.2 | 40.8 | 50.0 Third births | 80 | 7.6 | 45.0 | 52.6 Fourth and fifth | 111 | 10.8 | 54.9 | 65.7 Sixth to tenth | 93 | 17.2 | 54.8 | 72.0 ------------------------------------------------------------- =Views of a Psychiatrist on Alcohol.--=Forel, who for years was the psychiatrist at the head of a large insane asylum at Zurich, Switzerland, has this to say about the effects of narcotic poisons and alcohol in particular: "The offspring tainted with alcoholic blastophthoria suffer various bodily and physical anomalies, among which are dwarfism, rickets, a predisposition to tuberculosis and epilepsy, moral idiocy, and idiocy in general, a predisposition to crime and mental diseases, sexual perversions, loss of suckling in women, and many other misfortunes." In another passage he[6] remarks as follows: