A. Bluhm.Medicine and Eugenics.39
in the number of these patients—occasional drunkards—keeping pace with
that of chronic alcoholics.
These will specially call forth the interest of the members of the Eugenic
Congress. From the clinical point of view they exhibit great importance;
for showing as they do all the episodic syndromes of degeneracy, all the
mental forms of it may be seen—maniacal, melancholic, idiotic : insanities
polymorphous or systematic, fixed ideas, monomanias connected with words
or numbers, every sort of phobia, obsession, impulse, and symptomatic
manifestation of great importance. When their objective lies in sexual
perversion, theft, arson, murder, etc., these various states raise the most
delicate questions whether from the point of view of philosophy, psychology,
sociology, or forensic medicine.
This class of society, in the grip of this poison, is unfortunately not
sterile; their miserable descendants come to dock in the asylum; so much so
that if we mass together the various elements, if we add the unfortunates
permanently disabled, such as epileptics, and the increasing crowd of feeble
minded, idiotic, tuberculous children, the mind recoils aghast at the gravity of
the danger. The necessity of an implacable war against alcoholism, which
crowds our asylums, our hospitals, and our homes with insane persons,
and sends a constant stream to our prisons and reformatories—such a war
must be the principal aim of the Eugenics Congress.
For long the evil genius of mankind, alcoholism has to-day laid its clutch
on women, and the admission figures now show their numbers on the increase
every year.
Such are the lessons which may be learnt from the report of Magnan and
Fillassier.EUGENICS AND OBSTETRICS.
(Abstract.)
By Dr. Agnes Bluhm,
Berlin.
1. Among the agencies under social control which impair the racial
qualities of future generations, an important place is taken by the Science
of Medicine, especially by Obstetrics. For the increase of obstetrics
increases the incapacity for bearing children of future generations.
2. The great difference in the capacity for bearing children between the
primitive and civilized races depends only in part on the lessened fitness of
the latter due to the increase of skilled assistance.
3. Incapacity for bearing children can be acquired; it develops, how
ever, abundantly on the grounds of a congenital predisposition.
4. In so far as the latter is the case, obstetrics contributes towards the
diffusion of this incapacity.
