y injuring that
organ, so that its efficiency as a filter is impaired. On the whole
subject of expectant motherhood and the morbid influences which may act
upon it, the greatest living authority is my friend and teacher, Dr. J.
W. Ballantyne of Edinburgh. He contributed an important paper on this
subject to our first National Conference on Infantile Mortality held in
1906.[22] I only wish it were possible to reproduce in full here Dr.
Ballantyne's paper on the Ante-Natal Causes of Infantile Mortality. The
unread critic who is so ready with the word fanatic whenever alcohol is
attacked might begin to derive from it some faint idea of the quality
and massiveness of the evidence upon which our case is based. Here it
must suffice merely to quote the verdict at which Dr. Ballantyne arrives
after surveying all the evidence on the subject that had been obtained
up to the year 1906. He summarizes as follows:--

"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