Note 64 — Chapter XIII · THE RACIAL POISONS: ALCOHOL[55]
Reading edition
The subject of alcoholism and race-culture really demands a large volume. There is no space here to detail the fashion in which the drunken mother poisons her child after birth, when she nurses it, since, as has been chemically proved, alcohol is excreted in her milk. Says a most distinguished authority, Mrs. Scharlieb, “the child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as part of his diet, with the worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has a greater effect upon cells in proportion to their immaturity” (“The Drink Problem,” in the New Library of Medicine), and Dr. Sullivan refers to “numerous cases on record of convulsions and other disorders occurring in infants when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has been put on a non-alcoholic diet.” The reader may be referred to my brief paper, “Alcohol and Infancy,” published in the form of a tract by the Church of England Temperance Society.