The blastophthoric effect of chronic lead poisoning

Abstract

There have been frequent clinical observations of the apparent deleterious effect upon the germ plasm exerted by chronic lead poisoning. A majority of these cases have been found in female lead workers and in these it might be supposed that abortions, stillbirths and early deaths of infants were due as much to the toxic effect of lead during intra-uterine development as to an actual injury to the germ plasm. In the smaller number of instances in which the male parent alone was poisoned, the resulting sterility without impotency, the stillbirths and the early deaths of offspring are difficult to explain unless they are due to blastophthoria. The work of Stockard and of Cole and Davis has shown that alcohol has a similar effect. In a recent report which appeared as the present series of experiments was being concluded Cole and Bachhuber have demonstrated that the offspring of male rabbits poisoned by lead as well as of male fowls similarly poisoned are of distinctly lower vitality than the offspring of normal males.

In attempting to determine experimentally whether blastophthoria occurs in chronic lead poisoning, guinea pigs were given repeated weighed doses of commercial white lead in capsules by mouth. These guinea-pigs were mated, lead females with normal males and lead males with normal females. In order to check the results as efficiently as possible control matings were made of normal males with normal females under the same feeding and housing conditions as the lead poisoned pigs, and for the same reason the normal females were bred alternately to lead males and to normal males. The dosage of lead was controlled by frequent weighings in order that the general nutrition should not be seriously impaired.