extension of the morbid process. But for its deteriorating effects on the ovaries and testicles, alcohol would be a most serious social danger. Through its action on the generative organs it tends to prevent the survival of the unfit, rather than to develop degenerates. Opium seems to be the Charybdis on which the human bark strikes when escaping from the Scylla of alcohol. Its abuse as a narcotic is much older, even among the English-speaking races, than is generally suspected. Murrell, over ten years ago, demonstrated that the inhabitants of the fens of Lincolnshire had long employed opium as a prophylactic against malaria. The ratio of insanity in these regions proved to be very great. The same conditions obtained in certain malarial regions of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the use of strong infusions of poppy was common. The statistics of Rush[154] as to opium-caused insanity in Pennsylvania, indicate that the percentage of American opium abuses at the beginning of the nineteenth century was very great. The drug differs in two serious respects from alcohol. It is nearer in chemical composition to nerve tissue, and the tendency to its use may be transmitted by the mother directly to the foetus. This, as Bureau and Ringer have shown, receives through the placenta from its opium-using mother a certain amount of morphine. In consequence, the child in the first month of infancy must be nourished on the milk of an opium-using woman, or given opium in some other way lest it perish. To this fact Calkins[155] was the first to call attention. His results were corroborated later by Hubbard; Kiernan, of Chicago[156]; Erlenmeyer, of Berlin; F. B. Earle, of Chicago; Mattison, of Brooklyn; Hughes, of St. Louis; and others. Amabile, of New York, showed that not only were the children of opium-using mothers born with tendency to the opium habit, but that the mothers aborted frequently with twins, and that the children who survived were very liable to convulsions. Independently of this factor the mental state produced by opium habit resembles in many respects that of the lunatic, in that the victim of opium is as unable to distinguish between his wishes and the facts, and therefore often utters what appear to be sheer lies. Hence he is totally unreliable and has taken a step in mental and moral degeneracy that, by the ordinary laws of heredity, must greatly increase, unless corrected by healthy atavism and training in the next generation. Opium is a more dangerous factor of degeneracy than alcohol, since the opium user must be in a continuous state of intoxication to carry on his usual avocation, while abstinence is perfectly compatible with proper work on the part of the drunkard. The opium habit is increased by the peculiar propaganda carried on by the _habitués_ who justify their position by urging the use of opium for any ailment, however minimal. Opium, like alcohol, causes nervous exhaustion similar to, but greater than, that of the contagions