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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
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