Abstract
IN NATURE for March 15 of this year (pp. 55–56) some account was given of a summary of Dr. Raymond Pearl's researches on the progeny of alcoholised fowls. A later and much fuller description of this important work has now appeared in the Journal of Experimental Zoology (vol. xxii., 1917, pp. 125-86, 241-310), under the title of “The Experimental Modification of Germ-cells.” This paper is divided into three sections, the first of which describes the general plan of the experiments, and the second the effect upon the domestic fowl of the daily inhalation of ethyl alcohol and other substances, while the third discusses the effect of parental alcoholism and certain other drug intoxications on the progeny. The general results of the experiments have already appeared in NATURE (loc. cit.). Dr. Pearl alcoholised his fowls by inhalation because the birds refused to drink alcohol, even if highly diluted; Prof. Stockard had previously found it impossible to administer alcohol to guinea-pigs satisfactorily by the stomach, and had therefore also adopted the inhalation method. While the progeny of Stockard's guinea-pigs had been as a rule weakly and deformed, the offspring of Pearl's treated fowls were stronger, though less numerous, than those of his “controls.” In the case of the birds the effect of the alcohol on the germ-cells seems therefore to have been selective, whereas with the rodents it was utterly deleterious. A possible cause of the difference, which does not seem to have occurred to Dr. Pearl, may be the great contrast between the respiratory mechanism in birds and in mammals; the residual air in the lungs of the latter might be expected to increase the effect of the inhaled poison. Further, the excessive degradation of the offspring of Stockard's guinea-pigs suggests that the-germ-cells of those animals are peculiarly sensitive to adverse influences.
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C., G. Germ-Cells and Body in Inheritance. Nature 100, 53–54 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100053a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100053a0