"It must then be concluded that parental and especially maternal alcoholism of the kind to which the name of chronic drunkenness or persistent soaking is applied, is the source of both ante-natal and post-natal mortality. It acts in all the three ways in which I indicated that ante-natal causes can be shown to act in relation to the increase of infantile mortality, viz.,.by causing abortions., by predisposing to premature labours, and by weakening the infant by disease or deformity so that it more readily succumbs to ordinary morbid influences at and after birth. By causing diseases of the kidneys and of the placenta it also leads to that failure of the filter to which I have already referred; the placenta being damaged, not only does the alcohol more readily pass through it itself, but it is also possible for other poisons, germs, and toxins to cross over into the fatal economy. So it comes about that the most disastrous consequences are entailed upon the unborn infant in connection with syphilis, lead-poisoning, fevers, and the like in the intemperate mother." The foregoing was written as long ago as 1906, and various workers have helped to confirm it since that date. We must further learn that alcohol taken by the mother who nurses her child has an organic relation to the child after birth. It is true, indeed, that according to a celebrated observer, Professor von Bunge, the influence of alcoholism in preceding generations is such that the daughters of such a stock are mostly unable to nurse their children. It is not quite certain that Professor von Bunge has proved his case, but it is definitely proved that even if alcoholism in the maternal grandparent has not altogether prevented a child from being fed in the natural fashion, it may yet suffer gravely in consequence of receiving alcohol in its mother's milk. In the case of the nursing mother, there is one fresh avenue of excretion which the organism can employ for ridding itself of the poison, and to the efforts of the lungs and the kidneys are added those of the breasts. Alcohol can be readily traced in the mother's milk within twenty minutes of its entry into her stomach, and may be detected in it for as long as eight hours after a large dose. Many cases are on record where infants at the breast have thus become the subjects of both acute and chronic alcoholic poisoning. We have numerous reports of convulsions and other disorders occurring in infants when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has been put on a non-alcoholic diet. A most distinguished lady, Dr. Mary Scharlieb, may be quoted in this connection, or the reader may indeed refer to the chapter, "Alcoholism in Relation to Women and Children," contributed by her to the volume "The Drink Problem" in my New Library of Medicine. She says, "The child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as part of his diet