=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.”