Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/405

Rh -drinkers than in that of abstainers.

"3. The precipitating reaction between a solution of 1 per cent, human blood-serum and different dilutions of immune serum was greater in the case of drinkers than in that of abstainers.

"4. These experiments have also shown that the bactericidal power of blood-serum against typhoid bacteria was less in the case of drinkers than in that of abstainers.

"It seems clear, therefore, that alcohol, even in comparatively small doses, exercises a prejudicial effect on the protective mechanism of the human body."

The lecturer made his points clear by a carefully prepared series of charts. At its close Sir Victor Horsley, Professor Sims Woodhead, A. Pearce Gould, and several other distinguished physicians spoke in high terms of the painstaking care exhibited in the experiments.

Professor Laitinen's second lecture was upon "The Influence of Alcohol Upon Human Offspring." He sent out 15,000 circulars to his countrymen, asking many questions relative to themselves and their infant children, and received 5,845 replies relative to 20,008 children. He also studied personally a large number of drinking and abstaining families. From these studies he shows by careful tables that the drinking of alcohol by parents, even in small quantities, has an injurious influence upon human offspring. His studies in former years showed the same unfavorable influence upon the offspring of animals. One of his tables gives percentages of deaths of children in the homes of abstaining parents, moderate drinkers, and harder drinkers. Children of abstainers dying in the