"But what is of much greater importance is the fact that acute and chronic alcoholic intoxication deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of the procreators.... The recent researches of Bezzola seem to prove that the old belief in the bad quality of children conceived during drunkenness is not without foundation. Relying on the Swiss census of 1900, in which there figure nine thousand idiots, and after careful examination of the bulletins concerning them, this author has proved that there are two acute annual maximum periods for the conception of idiots (calculated from nine months before birth); the periods of carnival and vintage, when the people drink most. In the wine-growing districts the maximum conception of idiots is enormous, while it is almost nil at other periods. Moreover, these two maximum periods come at the time of year when conception is at a minimum among the rest of the population, the maximum of normal conceptions occurring at the beginning of summer." Another interpretation of Bezzola's results has been suggested to the effect that the license of these periods enables the defective members of the community, such as the feeble-minded, an opportunity of mating more readily and that consequently the result is direct inheritance of idiocy and allied defects instead of idiocy produced through alcoholic poisoning of the parental germ-cell. =Other Views.--=There are indeed many competent investigators who believe that alcoholism in parents has little or no part in the direct production of mental defects in children. For instance, Tredgold quotes Doctor Ireland's observations that although at New Year, when the fishermen return, the whole population of certain villages in Scotland gets drunk, there is no noticeable excess of defectives born nine months later, and remarks further that, "I have histories of idiots conceived under such circumstances, but so I have of normal children, and my opinion is, that while this may be a cause in some cases, the number of instances in this country at any rate is exceedingly small." Again, Goddard, one of our best known American students of feeble-mindedness, who has made careful study of this point under especially favorable conditions, feels that his data do not prove that alcoholism of either the father or the mother causes feeble-mindedness in the child. He concludes, "Everything seems to indicate that alcoholism itself is only a symptom; that it for the most part occurs in families where there is some form of neurotic taint, especially feeble-mindedness." Goddard, however, in common with many other observers, notes that miscarriages and deaths in infancy are far higher among inebriates than among abstainers.