Treatment of this sort for a period as long
as three years produces no apparent bad effect on the individuals; they
continue to grow and become fat and vigorous, taking plenty of food and
behaving in a normal manner in every particular. Some of them have been
killed from time to time, and all the tissues, including the
reproductive glands, have been found perfectly normal. "The treated
animals are, therefore, little changed or injured so far as their
behavior and structure goes. Nevertheless, the effects of the treatment
are most decidedly indicated by the type of offspring to which they give
rise, whether they are mated together or with normal individuals."
Before the treatment is begun, every individual is mated at least once,
to demonstrate its possibility of giving rise to sound offspring. The
crucial test of the influence of alcohol on the germ-cells is, of
course, the mating of a previously alcoholized male with a normal,
untreated female, in a normal environment.
When the experiment was last reported,[16] it had covered five years and
four generations. The records of 682 offspring produced by 571 matings
were tabulated, 164 matings of alcoholized animals, in which either the
father, mother, or both were alcoholic, gave 64, or almost 40%, negative
results or early abortions, while only 25% of the control matings failed
to give full-term litters.
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