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How did the effects of alcohol on reproduction become scientifically uninteresting?

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References

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  11. C. R. Stockard “The Development of Fundulus heteroclitus in Solutions of Lithium Chlorid, with Appendix on Its Development in Fresh Water,” J. Exp. Zool.3 (1906), 99–120; idem, “The Artificial Production of a Single Median Cyclopean Eye in the Fish Embryo by Means of Sea Water Solutions of Magnesium Chlorid,” Arch. Entw. Org., 23 (1907), 249–258. See Jane M. Oppenheimer, “Basic Embryology and Clinical Medicine: A Case History in Serendipity,” Bull. Hist. Med., 58 (1984), 236–240.

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  13. See, e.g., Stockard, “Artificial Production of a Single Median Cyclopean Eye” (above, n. 11): C. R. Stockard, “The Influence of Alcohol and Other Anesthetics on Embryonic Development,” Amer. J. Anat., 10 (1910), 369–392.

  14. Stockard, “Influence of Alcohol and Other Anesthetics” (above, n. 13), p. 370.

  15. On the low status of basic biology at the college see Frederick Gudernatsch, “Out of the Early Cornell Years,” typescript, 1958, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center Archives, New York, N.Y., pp. 40–45; Larrabee, Benevolent and Necessary Institution (above, n. 12), pp. 295–296.

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  17. The experiments on chickens were not published, but were mentioned in C. R. Stockard, “An Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration in Mammals Treated with Alcohol,” Arch. Internal Med., 10 (1912), 381.

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  18. The experiments on chickens were not published, but were mentioned in C. R. Stockard, “An Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration in Mammals Treated with Alcohol,” Arch. Internal Med., 10 (1912) pp. 369–398. He established priority through C. R. Stockard, “Is the Control of Embryonic Development a Practical Problem?” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 51 (1912), 191–200; and he sought to reach the international scientific community at the same time with a condensed account that gave credit to the assistant who cared for the animals: C. R. Stockard and Dorothy M. Craig, “An Experimental Study of the Influence of Alcohol on the Germ Cells and Developing Embryos of Mammals,” Arch. Entw. Org., 35 (1912), 569–584.

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  19. Stockard, “Experimental Study of Racial, Degeneration” (above, n. 17), p. 388.

  20. The experiments on chickens were not published, but were mentioned in C. R. Stockard, “An Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration in Mammals Treated with Alcohol,” Arch. Internal Med., 10 (1912) pp. 389–390, 394–395.

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  21. The experiments on chickens were not published, but were mentioned in C. R. Stockard, “An Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration in Mammals Treated with Alcohol,” Arch. Internal Med., 10 (1912) pp. 390–393. Three of the four females were thus given alcohol both before and during pregnancy.

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  22. Stockard, “Experimental Study of the Influence of Alcohol” (above, n. 18), p. 578; “Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration” (above, n. 17), pp. 393–394.

  23. Stockard, “Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration” (above, n. 17), p. 397.

  24. Stockard, “Control of Embryonic Development” (above, n. 18), pp. 199, 200.

  25. “Alcohol and Racial Degeneration,” J. Amer. Med. Ass., 59 (1912), 2261; Survey, 29 (1913), 677–678. See Also Sci. Temperance J., 21 (1912), 41–42.

  26. This lecture, delivered nationwide, was published in Richmond P. Hobson, Alcohol and the Human Race (New York: Revell, 1919).

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  27. C. R. Stockard, “The Effect on the Offspring of Intoxicating the Male Parent and the Transmission of the Defects to Subsequent Generations,” Amer. Nat., 47 (1913), p. 642.

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  28. This work was pioneered by the leading German biologist Oscar Hertwig and his two children, Paula and Günther: for discussion, see ibid., pp. 643–646.

  29. Ibid., p. 659. He also reported fifteen matings between alcoholic females and normal males, and twenty-nine matings of alcoholic pairs. Fertility among alcoholic females was higher, but the other results were similar. These females were treated both before and during pregnancy.

  30. Ibid., pp. 676, 677. See also C. R. Stockard, “The Artificial Production of Structural Arrests and Racial Degeneration,” Proc. N.Y. Pathol. Soc., 13 (1913), 83–89.

  31. Stockard, “Effect on the Offspring” (above, n. 27), p. 677.

  32. Ibid., p. 676.

  33. Ibid., p. 674.

  34. Ibid., p. 660.

  35. Papanicolaou's work on this project led him to determine the estrous cycle of the guinea pig, and to develop the techniques for sampling vaginal cells that ultimately became the Pap smear: see D. Erskine Carmichael, The Pap Smear: Life of George N. Papanicolaou (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1973), pp. 44–53.

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  36. C. R. Stockard and G. N. Papanicolaou, “A Further Analysis of the Hereditary Transmission of Degeneracy and Deformities by the Descendants of Alcoholized Mammals,” Amer. Nat., 50 (1916), 65–88, 144–177. See also C. R. Stockard, “Experimental Modification of the Chromatin within the Germ Cells of One Generation and the Resulting Hereditary Transmission of Degeneracy and Deformities,” Anat. Rec., 10 (1915), 246–249; idem, “The Hereditary Transmission of Degeneracy and Deformities by the Descendants of Alcoholized Mammals,” Interstate Med. J., 23 (1916), 385–403.

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  37. Stockard and Papanicolaou, “Further Analysis” (above, n. 36), p. 84.

  38. Ibid., p. 171. To further support their argument regarding chromatin damage, S&P noted (pp. 163–167) that in matings between alcoholics and normals, mortality was higher among the female offspring of alcoholic males and the male offspring of alcoholic females than it was among the same-sex descendants of treated animals. On this basis they argued that there was probably a “mass action” effect associated with the sex chromosomes: a daughter, receiving an X chromosome from her alcoholic father, would get a greater quantity of damaged chromatin than would a son, who received the smaller Y chromosome; conversely, the son of an alcoholic mother would have a large damaged X chromosome and a small normal Y, while the daughter would have equal amounts of normal and pathological chromatin. An alternative explanation, also chromosomal, was that alcohol might preferentially damage the X chromosome.

  39. H. S. Jennings, “Raymond Pearl,” Biog. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., 22 (1943), 295–347; Sharon Kingsland, “Raymond Pearl: On the Frontier in the 1920's,” Human Biol., 56 (1984), 1–18.

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  40. R. Pearl, “The Experimental Modification of Germ Cells,” J. Exp. Zool., 22 (1917), 125–185, 241–310. See also idem, “On the Effect of Continued Administration of Certain Poisons to the Domestic Fowl, with Special Reference to the Progeny,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 55 (1916), 243–258; idem, “The Effect of Parental Alcoholism (and Certain Other Drug Intoxicants) upon the Progeny in the Domestic Fowl,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 2 (1916), 380–384. On publication, see Harrison to Pearl, June 23, 1916, MS group 1098 (Journal of Experimental Zoology), box 5, file 36, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.

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  41. R. Pearl, “The Experimental Modification of Germ Cells,” J. Exp. Zool., 22 (1917), pp. 182, pp. 246–247.

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  42. R. Pearl, “The Experimental Modification of Germ Cells,” J. Exp. Zool., 22 (1917), pp. 248, 259–260, 277–278. In the preliminary “Effect of Continued Administration” (above, n. 40), p. 247, Pearl supposed that alcoholized chickens were fatter because they were less active, and he considered both changes to be indices of inferiority to the control population; in the fuller publication he limited himself to quantitative variables, did not discuss activity levels, and decided that greater weight was a sign of biological superiority.

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  43. Pearl, “Experimental Modification” (above, n. 40), p. 287.

  44. Ibid., p. 283.

  45. Pearl, “Effect of Continued Administration” (above, n. 40), p. 258.

  46. C. R. Stockard and G. N. Papanicolaou, “Further Studies on the Modification of the Germ-Cells in Mammals: The Effect of Alcohol on Treated Guinea-Pigs and Their Descendants,” J. Exp. Zool., 26 (1918), 161, 167–168.

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  47. C. R. Stockard and G. N. Papanicolaou, “Further Studies on the Modification of the Germ-Cells in Mammals: The Effect of Alcohol on Treated Guinea-Pigs and Their Descendants,” J. Exp. Zool., 26 (1918), pp. 145–151, 199–205.

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  48. C. R. Stockard and G. N. Papanicolaou, “Further Studies on the Modification of the Germ-Cells in Mammals: The Effect of Alcohol on Treated Guinea-Pigs and Their Descendants,” J. Exp. Zool., 26 (1918), pp. 221–222.

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  49. C. R. Stockard and G. N. Papanicolaou, “Further Studies on the Modification of the Germ-Cells in Mammals: The Effect of Alcohol on Treated Guinea-Pigs and Their Descendants,” J. Exp. Zool., 26 (1918), pp. 138, 218. Their more specific argument was that Pearson and Elderton's data on the health of school-aged children of alcoholic and sober parents did not specify whether or not the parents were drinking a decade earlier when the children were conceived.

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  50. Ibid., p. 131.

  51. R. Pearl, “The Experimental Modification of Germ Cells,” J. Exp. Zool., 22 (1917), pp. 220–221. An additional problem, not mentioned by S&P, was that Pearl's mortality figures were heavily influenced by an epidemic of the poultry lung infection, roup, which attacked controls most heavily — perhaps because the experimental series were, in effect, inhaling disinfectant daily.

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  52. Ada Hart Arlitt, “The Effect of Alcohol on the Intelligent Behavior of the White Rat and Its Progeny,” Psych. Monogr., 26 (1919), no. 4; Ada Hart Arlitt and H. Gideon Wells, “The Effect of Alcohol on the Reproductive Tissues,” J. Exp. Med., 26 (1917), 769–779; E. C. MacDowell and E. M. Vicari, “On the Growth and Fecundity of Alcoholized Rats,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 3 (1917), 577–579. See also slightly earlier work using rabbits: L. J. Cole and C. L. Davis, “The Effect of Alcohol on the Male Germ Cells Studied by Means of Double Matings,” Science, 39 (1914), 476.

  53. Jennings, “Pearl” (above, no. 39), p. 303; E. C. MacDowell, “Experiments with Alcohol and White Rats,” Amer. Nat., 66 (1922), 291.

  54. Haven Emerson, “Prohibition and Mortality and Morbidity” (1932), in idem, Selected Papers (Battle Creek: W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1949), pp. 286–289; John C. Burnham, Paths into American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 174–176.

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  55. Among his projects was an effort to show, from mortality statistics, that moderate drinkers lived as long as teetotalers. He also functioned as an unofficial adviser to the Association against the Prohibition Amendment. See Raymond Pearl, Alcohol and Longevity (New York: Knopf, 1926); correspondence of Pearl with leaders of the AAPA, 1922–1929, Raymond Pearl Papers, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pa. He provided the last, enduring word on the subject, by writing “Alcohol: Biological Aspects,” Encyclop. Soc. Sci., 1: 620–622.

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  56. C. R. Stockard, “Latest Scientific Investigation in America of the Action of Alcohol,” Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress against Alcoholism, Washington, D.C., 1920, pp. 369–381; quotation on p. 375 (apparently printed from a stenographic report).

  57. C. R. Stockard, “Alcohol as a Selective Agent in the Improvement of Racial Stock,” Brit. Med. J., 12 August 1922, pp. 255–259; idem, “Alcohol a Factor in Eliminating Racial Degeneracy,” Amer. J. Med. Sci., 167 (1924), 464–477; idem, “Alcohol in Its Biological Aspects,” Med. J. Rec. (New York), 15 February 1928, pp. 195–197.

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  58. Stockard, “Latest Scientific Investigation” (above, n. 56), p. 379. Pearl was glad to hear about Stockard's conversion, but was angry that he claimed originality. Pearl ultimately extracted a private admission that he had priority: see R. Pearl, “The Racial Effect of Alcohol,” Eugen. Rev., 16 (1924), 24; Stockard to Pearl, February 2, 1925; January 27, 1928, Pearl Papers (above, n. 55). In the early 1920s Stockard began a long-term study of the relations among heredity, development, and temperament, using purebred dogs as subjects. Highly regarded by the leaders of the Rockefeller philanthropies, he received $400,000 in support from the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation. He published little up to his death in 1939, and the judgment of the geneticists brought in to salvage the data was that the project was fundamentally misconceived. See staff minutes, February 12, 1930, Rockefeller Foundation RG 1.1, series 200, box 81, folder 975; and “Cornell University—Stockard Dog Farm,” typescript, 8 pp., [1940], folder 978, Rockefeller Archive Center, Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

  59. On Carnegie alcohol research see Philip J. Pauly, “Is Liquor Intoxicating? Scientists, Prohibition, and the Normalization of Drinking,” Amer. J. Pub. Health, 84, 1994, 305–313.

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  60. MacDowell and Vicari, “Growth and Fecundity” (above, n. 52); Carnegie Inst. Wash. Yearbk., 15 (1916), 124–127.

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  62. MacDowell and Vicari, “Alcoholism and the Behavior of White Rats, I” (above, n. 61), p. 210.

  63. W. B. Scott, “Symposium on the Inheritance of Acquired Characters: Historical Sketch,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 62 (1923), 273. See also M. F. Guyer, “The Germ-Cell and Serological Influences,” ibid., pp. 274–291; J. A. Detlefson, “Are the Effects of Long-Continued Rotation in Rats Inherited?” ibid., pp. 292–300; F. B. Hanson, “Modifications in the Albino Rat Following Treatment with Alcohol Fumes and X-Rays; and the Problem of Their Inheritance,” ibid., pp. 301–310; C. R. Stockard, “Experimental Modification of the Germ-Plasm and Its Bearing on the Inheritance of Acquired Characters,” ibid., pp. 311–325.

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  64. F. B. Hanson to F. A. Hall, September 12, 1918; February 17, 1919, Frederick A. Hall Chancellor's Records, Washington University Archives, St. Louis, Mo.

  65. F. B. Hanson and V. Handy, “The Effects of Alcohol Fumes on the Albino Rat: Introduction and Sterility Data for the First Treated Generation,” Amer. Nat., 57 (1923), 532–544.

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  66. See, e.g., F. B. Hanson, “The Effects of Administration of Alcohol Fumes to Five Successive Generations of Albino Rats,” Anat. Rec., 26 (1923), 392; idem, “Modifications in the Albino Rat” (above, n. 63); F. B. Hanson and Florence Heys, “Correlations of Body Weight, Body Length, and Tail Length in Normal and Alcoholic Albino Rats,” Genetics, 9 (1924), 368–371; idem, “Alcohol and the Sex Ratio,” Genetics, 10 (1925), 351–358; idem, “Do Albino Rats Having Ten Generations of Alcoholic Ancestry Inherit Resistance to Alcohol Fumes?” Amer. Nat., 61 (1927), 43–53; idem, “The Effects of Alcohol on Birth Weight and Litter Size in the Albino Rat,” ibid., pp. 503–519; idem, “Alcohol and Body Weight in the Albino Rat,” Genetics, 13 (1928), 121–125; and, as a summing up, F. B. Hanson and Zola K. Cooper, “The Effects of Ten Generations of Alcoholic Ancestry upon Learning Ability in the Albino Rat,” J. Exp. Zool., 56 (1930), 369–392. Hanson's arguments were reinforced by the publication of a British replication and critique of Stockard's guinea pig work: F. M. Durham and H. M. Woods, “Alcohol and Inheritance: An Experimental Study,” Special Report Series, Medical Research Council (Gr. Brit.), 168 (1932). Hanson was not the first to report negative results. In the 1910s the University of Oklahoma physiologist L. B. Nice found no effects of alcohol on reproduction in mice-but in the earlier political climate, and in the absence of sophisticated experimental design, his work gained little notice. See L. B. Nice, “Comparative Study on the Effects of Alcohol, Nicotine, Tobacco Smoke and Caffeine on White Mice. I. Effects on Reproduction and Growth,” J. Exp. Zool., 13 (1911), 133ff.; idem, “Studies on the Effects of Alcohol, Nicotine and Caffeine on White Mice. II. Effects on Activity,” ibid., 14 (1912), 123–151; idem, “Further Observations on the Effects of Alcohol on White Mice,” Amer. Nat., 51 (1917), 596–607.

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  67. An interesting question, beyond the scope of this paper, would be a consideration of the relations between the spread of significance testing and the self-consciously “modern” skepticism of American intellectuals in the 1920s and early 1930s. The new statistical methods seemingly played an important role in discrediting a wide range of previously accepted truths. For another instance of this process see Pauly, “Is Liquor Intoxicating?” (above, n. 59).

  68. See Raymond Fosdick and Albert Scott, Toward Liquor Control (New York: Harper, 1933); David Kyvig, Repealing National Prohibition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Ron Roizen, “The American Discovery of Alcoholism,” Ph.D. diss., University of California (Berkeley), 1991; Robert E. Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists, 1900–1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

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  69. A. W. Packard to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., May 24, 1939; and Packard, file memo, October 11, 1938, in Rockefeller family archives, RG 2, box 53, file “Research Council on Problems of Alcohol,” Rockefeller Archive Center, Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

  70. Howard Haggard and E. M. Jellinek, Alcohol Explored (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1942), p. 207; Mark Keller, How Alcohol Affects the Body (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Center for Alcohol Studies, 1955), p. 10. Both are quoted in Warner and Rosett, “Effects of Drinking on Offspring” (above, n. 1), p. 1411. See also C. L. Randall and E. P. Riley, “Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: Current Issues and the Status of Animal Research,” Neurobehav. Toxicol. Teratol., 3 (1981), 111.

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  71. MacDowell noted ruefully that “technique satisfactory to a physiologist may involve serious errors in the eyes of a psychologist, while the experiments of both may, to a geneticist, seem to have weak points,” and that the greatest difficulty was in “the nature of the controls” (“Experiments with Alcohol and White Rats” [above, n. 53], p. 290). The problems with Pearl's controls have been noted above; Stockard's superior F4 generation were so only in comparison with a control population that included animals raised early in the study, before Papanicolaou had worked out nutritional and cleanliness requirements. On the history of laboratory animals in reproductive science see Bonnie Tocher Clause, “The Wistar Rat as a Right Choice: Establishing Mammalian Standards and the Ideal of a Standardized Mammal,” J. Hist. Biol, 26 (1993), 329–349; Adele Clarke, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences and “the Problem of Sex” (forthcoming).

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  74. For another example, and a fuller analysis, of the significance of null results in areas of public controversy, see John Beatty, “Genetics in the Atomic Age,” in The Expansion of American Biology, ed. Keith Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 284–324.

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  76. See, e.g., E. L. Abel, “Paternal Alcohol Exposure: Effects on Offspring in Mice and Rats,” in Biomedical and Social Aspects of Alcohol and Alcoholism, ed. K. Kuriyama et al. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1988), pp. 855–858.

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Pauly, P.J. How did the effects of alcohol on reproduction become scientifically uninteresting?. J Hist Biol 29, 1–28 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00129695

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