On the Trail of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

 1900-1949.  A 26 page study, "The Effects of Drinking on Offspring:  An Historical Survey of American and British Literature." by Rebecca Warner and Henry L. Rosett. (1975)  The Journal of Studies on Alcohol. cites 33 articles written in this time period that warn against the dangers of drinking while pregnant.  Copies of these articles are not included in this study.  I may include them at a later date if I can obtain them.

    1900.  "Passage de l'alcohol ingere de la mere su foetus et passage de l'alcohol dans le lait, en particular chez la femme." Obstetriq.  by M. Nicloux.  5.  97-132.  In Streissguth's Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:  A Guide for Families and Communities, she says he   "...documented in dogs, sheep and humans that alcohol consumed by a mother passed through to her milk and then on to her suckling offspring." 

    From a journal article, "Alcohol and the Antenatal Child Welfare" by Dr. J.W. Ballantyne in The British Journal of Inebriety, on the research of M. Nicloux,  "Nicloux...found alcohol in the cord, the placenta, and the blood of the child...  He found, too, that alcohol passes into the milk..."

  Sigmund Freud writes his first textbook The Interpretation of Dreams.

    1901.  Bezzola, D.A.  (1901)  "A Statistical Investigation into the Role of Alcohol in the Origin of Innate Imbecility."  Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.  

    Paul Ladrague wrote "Acoolisme et Enfants."  These pour le doctorat en Medicine.  (Alcoholism and  Infants.  Doctoral Dissertation.)  Paris:  Universite de Paris, Faculte de Medicine. (Paris, University of Paris, Faculty of Medicine.)  According to Dr. Ann Streissguth in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:   A Guide for Families and Communities, (he) "...reported from personal observation that alcoholic mothers had a high proportion of spontaneous abortions, weak and poorly developed infants, early infant demise and epilepsy, idiocy among their children.  He also presented 10 cases in which infants who were breast-fed by mothers or wet nurses who were alcoholic exhibited diarrhea, vomiting, extreme agitation and convulsions."

    1903.  Hodge, C.F., "The Influence of Alcohol on Growth and Development."  In   Atwater, W.O. et al., eds. Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem.    Boston:  Houghton, Mifflin.

    1905.  "A Study of the Effects of Alcohol on School Children."  Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.  by T.A. McNicholl.   I have this citation but have been unable to locate the original article.

    1907.  Aiken, J.M.  "Brain and Nerve Degeneration."  Journal of Inebriety.  

    1909.  From a lecture by U.S. Congressman Richmond Pearson Hobson as reported in Drugs in America:  A Documentary History.  Edited by David. F. Musto.  (2002)  New York:  New York University Press.  "Dr. Laitinen of the University of Helsingfors reports in the Proceedings of the International Congress on Alcoholism.  'These investigation uncover the degenerating effect of even the most temperate drinking by parents upon their children, showing the general use of 'light wine' or 'light beer' must in time bring about the disintegration of any family, and the decline and downfall of any nation.'"   

    1910-1914.  Three papers by Charles R. Stockard of Cornell University:
1910:  "Influence of Alcohol and other Anaesthetics On Embryonic Development." American Journal of Anatomy.  10.  369-392. 
1913:  "Alcoholic Injuries to Germ Cells."  American Naturalist.
1914:  "Alcoholic Injuries to Germ Cells."   Journal of Heredity. 
     A quote from Dr. William Healy, page 263 of The Individual Delinquent (1918),  reads, "A fine example of controlled experiment is that by Stockard, who has most cautiously studied the effect of alcohol on the germ cells of animals.  He finds that the degeneracy caused by alcohol may be passed on by degenerate offspring."  The majority of subjects in Healy's book were entire families affected by alcoholism.
    Stockard's experiments were considered to be among the most influential of his time.  However, he did cause his experimental subjects to inhale the alcohol fumes rather than ingest the liquid and his subjects were often purebred dogs whose genetic dispositions were often questionable.

    1910-1911:  Keynes, J.M.  "Influence of Parental Alcoholism."  Journal of the Royal Stat. Society.  

     1910.  Hoppe, H.  "Procreation During Intoxication."  (Translated and abridged by Brown, K.O.)  Journal of Inbriety.  32.  105-110.

     K. Pearson and E.M. Elderton.  A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism.  (2nd ed.)  London:  University of London. Quote from Dr. Ann Streissguth in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:  A Guide for Families and Communities,   "...after studying several hundred children in Edinburgh, Scotland, that short stature was associated only with maternal, not paternal, alcoholism."

    Ribakoff, F. Ye.  "Heredity and Alcoholism:  Statistical Investigation Based on 2,000  Cases."  Journal of Nevropathology i Psikhiatry.  Korsakova, Mask.  

    Sazhin, I.V. (1910)  "Alcohol and Heredity".  Russk.  Vratch. 

    1912.  Abstract of A. Gordon's article, "Parental Alcoholism in Mental Deficiency of Children." in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  Gordon's study involved 298 cases of mental deficiency.  He states that he only reported on the living members of the family.  He also noted that several children died at a very tender age or very early.  The survivors "presented mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy.  Therefore, one must logically conclude that the effect of alcoholism on the offspring is most disastrous."

    1913.  Davenport, C.B.  "Alcoholism in a Rural Community of Defectives."  Journal of Inebriety.  

    The Kallikak Family:  A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness by Henry Herbert Goddard, published in 1913.  This book originally started out as a study of feeblemindedness.  In 1995, a group of researchers, lead by Robert J. Karp, re-examined Goddard's study and came to the conclusion that Goddard had actually been studying a family comprised of several adults with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Goddard had originally believed the father, Martin Kallikak was the carrier of the "feeblemind" gene.  However, his marriage to a "normal' woman produced a majority of "normal" children while his illicit affair with a "feebleminded" woman produced a majority of children and grandchildren with physical and behavioral characteristics that Karp ascribes to FAS.
    Photos of members of the family also show the facial features associated with full FAS.
(Photos may be found at http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Goddard/)

    1914.  Excerpt from Drugs in America:  A Documentary History.  Edited by David. F. Musto.  (2002)  New York:  New York University Press.  Testimony of U.S. Congressman Richmond Pearson Hobson in the debate over Prohibition.  "...it blights the offspring; it attacks the tender tissues associated with reproduction in both male and female;  it affects the tender system of the embryo in the prenatal period.  For both parents to be simply moderate drinkers, to drink but once a day beer or wine will quadruple the chance of miscarriage for the mother, increasing 400 per cent the suffering and danger of maternity, will increase nearly 100 per cent the number of children who die in the first year of infancy.  The children of a drinking person die off at a rate of from four to fives times as many as those of abstaining parents.  Do not talk of prohibition invading the rights of individuals--liquor blights the rights of our citizens before they are born." 

    Cole, L.J. and Davis, C.L.  "The Effect of Alcohol on the Male Germ Cells, Studied by Means of Double Matings."  Science. 

    1916.  Dr. J.W. Ballantyne in the Journal of the American Medical Association,  "Alcohol and the Development of the Fetus."  "Alcohol is a danger to antenatal health and a menace to to antenatal life at every one of the stages of that existence and through each of the progenitors."

    Gordon, A.  "The Influence of Alcohol on the Progeniture."  Int. Med. Journal.  

    1917.  Ballantyne, J.W.  "Alcohol and Antenatal Child Welfare."  British Journal of Inebriety.  Dr. Ballantyne makes another educated argument for not drinking during pregnancy.  But what makes this journal article interesting is the bibliography.  Dr. Ballantyne has collected journal articles on alcohol and pregnancy from all over Europe.  There are 38 references from France, 31 from Germany, 10 from Italy, 4 from Switzerland, 3 from Austria, 2 from Finland, the Netherlands, and Spain and 1 each from Russia, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.

    1918.  The Individual Delinquent by William Healy, MD, published in 1918.  Dr. Healy was a meticulous researcher who was the director of the Psychopathic Institute, Juvenile Court of Chicago and an associate professor of Mental and Nervous Diseases of the Chicago Policlinic.  His massive work of over 800 pages documents his study of young people who consistently got themselves into trouble during the last part of the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s. 
    Of particular interest is this Section 152, titled Alcoholism During Pregnancy.  "Difficulty that there is in understanding the bad effect of alcohol upon germ cells is not paralleled by its obviously easy influence upon the growing fetus.  Alcohol circulates with great ease through such membranes as separate the mother's blood from the embryonic circulation, and thus the growing brain cells are bathed in it in proportion as the mother takes it into her person.  So the drinking mother stands a very good chance, by all accounts, of bringing forth children with defective or unstable nervous systems.  We know the relation, in turn, of these abnormalities to human inefficiency and to criminalism.
    "Proofs of the above as a cause are, very naturally, vitiated by the fact that a later defective environment practically always is also a factor.  Indeed, in cases where we heard of the mother's alcoholism during pregnancy, we found there was so much else that might account for the child's bad conduct that we have been obliged to refrain from ever including this as a main factor.  As in the case of probable alcoholic deterioration of germ cells (vide Section 194) proofs of actual deterioration will have to come through direct physiological rather than through social and psychological studies."
    Section 194, parts b and c:  (b) Alcohol and Procreation.  The effect which the parent, being under the influence of alcohol at the time of procreation, may possibly have on the offspring stands on the border line between defective heredity and defective environmental conditions.  The time is probably not yet ripe for a definite statement upon this subject, but certainly one may assert the probably correctness of the view of those who hold that an undue amount of alcohol in the circulation of either parent at the time of procreation may be the cause of degeneracy of the offspring. 
    (c)  Antenatal Conditions.  We have already sufficiently discussed this point in Section 152.  There cannot be the slightest doubt that the ingestion of alcohol by the pregnant mother may have a very deleterious effect upon the nervous system of the unborn child.
    Some of the characteristics Healy tested for were memory, ability to give testimony (attention to detail), attention, motor coordination, associative process, perception of form and color relationships, learning ability, ability to profit from experience, language ability, arithmetical ability, mental representation and analysis, foresight and planfulness, visual perception and analysis, judgment and discrimination, suggestibility, will power, apperception (recognition of the relationship of parts to parts and then to other more generalized things), moral discrimination, and ability to follow instructions.
    Some interesting chapters in Healy's book: 
Chapter VII:  Influence of Pictures especially Moving Pictures
Chapter XVII:  Defects in Special Mental Abilities...language deficits...defect in arithmetical  
             abilities...defect in judgment and foresight...defect in self control.
Chapter XXIII:  Abnormal Social Suggestibility
Chapter XXV:  Pathological Lying and Accusation
Chapter XXVI:  Love of Excitement and Adventure
Chapter XXVII:  Kelptomania...Pyromania...Suicide...Vagabondage
    Healy did not propose any form of treatment or therapy, rather he simply asked for the recognition of the various factors that comprised the behavior of the "delinquent" child.
    [It is interesting to note that a later researcher, Dr. Hervey Cleckley in 1941, felt there was no connection between the patients he was observing and the subjects of Healy's text.]

    Glueck, B.A.  "A Study of 608 Admissions to Sing Sing Prison."  Mental Hygiene.  .

    1920-1933.  The Volstead Act / Eighteenth Amendment / Prohibition.  A paper by Philip Pauly, (1996) "How Did the Effects of Alcohol on Reproduction Become ScientificallyUninteresting in the Early Twentieth Century?"  Journal of the History of Biology,  says that one factor was the illegalization of alcohol made unnecessary to study the effects of alcohol consumption.  Other readings I have done indicate that women in the work force after World War I and questions about research methodologies also influenced the decline in research.

******************************************************************************    1923-1930.  The Hanson Papers.  Between 1923 and 1930, Frank B. Hanson wrote a number of scientifically influential papers that took a neutral approach in regard to maternal drinking causing  problems in the unborn child.  This, in effect, made further research into the problem of maternal drinking, a scientific dead-end.  (from Philip Pauly, "How did the Effects of Alcohol on Reproduction Become Scientifically Uninteresting in the Early Twentieth Century."  Journal of the History of Biology. 

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    1925.  George, M.D.  (Reprinted in 1965) London Life in the Eighteenth Century.  New York:  Capricorn.

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