In Iceland, where much of the primitive life of Scandinavian Europe is still preserved, great precautions are taken with pregnant women.

They must lead a quiet life, avoid tight garments, be moderate in eating and drinking, take no alcohol, be safeguarded from all shocks, while their husbands and all others who surround them must treat them with consideration, save them from worry and always bear with them patiently.[7] It is necessary to emphasize this point because we have to realize that the modern movement for surrounding the pregnant woman with tenderness and care, so far from being the mere outcome of civilized softness and degeneracy, is, in all probability, the return on a higher plane to the sane practice of those races which laid the foundations of human greatness.
While rest is the cardinal virtue imposed on a woman during the later months of pregnancy, there are other points in her regimen that are far from unimportant in their bearing on the fate of the child.

One of these is the question of the mother's use of alcohol.

Undoubtedly alcohol has been a cause of much fanaticism.

But the declamatory extravagance of anti-alcoholists must not blind us to the fact that the evils of alcohol are real.