and nursing
motherhood because each of these offers special temptations and
opportunities for the beginning of the alcoholic habit or strengthening
its hold in a deadly fashion, and it is certainly necessary for us to
know that the supposed advantages to the child, which constitute a new
argument for alcohol at these times, are not advantages but injuries
which may be grave and often fatal. The utterly incomprehensible thing
is how anyone can suppose or ever could suppose otherwise.

It is necessary to add a few words to the foregoing since there has
recently appeared what purports to be a contribution to some of the
problems that have concerned us. Part of the foregoing argument has
rested upon the fact, only too definitely, variously and frequently
proved, that alcoholism in women prejudices the performance of their
supreme functions. Complicated as the maternal relation to the future
is, the relations of alcohol to the problem are correspondingly so, and
in any discussion that is to be of value we must draw the necessary
distinctions. In many scientific contributions to the subject this has
already been done. We have identified certain degenerate stocks who
display the symptoms of alcoholism. The alcohol may aggravate their
degeneracy but it is not the prime cause of it in them, though it may
have been so in their ancestors. The children of such persons are
degenerate also, and as the class is numerous and fertile there is here
a social problem which is not primarily a problem in alcohol, but is
accidentally connected therewith simply because the proneness to
alcoholism is a symptom of the degeneracy.

Quite distinct from the foregoing there is the influence of alcohol upon
mothers and motherhood that would otherwise have been healthy. Alcohol,
like lead, as has been shown elsewhere, may injure the racial elements
in the mother before even expectant motherhood occurs. Later, it may
prejudice both expectant motherhood and nursing motherhood; further it
is often the primary cause of over-laying and of chronic cruelty and
neglect. Until quite lately there was also the action of the
public-house upon the children to be reckoned with, where the mother
visited it and was allowed to take them with her. That, however, has
been at last put a stop to in England, following the example of
civilization elsewhere.

But it will be clear that the problem is a complicated one. It has been
confidently attacked by Professor Karl Pea