Athletic sports are not of necessity conducive to long life, even if they are to temporary robust health; but there is no mistaking the fact that the sedentary and in-door life of the average Jew is a deteriorator to health and life, and especially among that class of families who are poor and keep no servant; from heredity and home education having adopted unhygienic customs, in which they have grown up,—in these a total disregard for all ventilation forms a part. Were an uncircumcised race so to live, scrofula and phthisis would be the inevitable result. This difference of results I have witnessed more than once as existing among the two races coming from the same European nationality, where their disregard to ordinary rules of hygiene, induced by climatic causes, especially ventilation, were alike in both the Semitic and European descendants of the one nation, the purely European being more prone to consumption and scrofula. It is interesting to note the difference in the moral, mental, and physical conditions induced by creeds; it would seem as if it should not make any difference. The generally accepted idea of religion is that it should raise the moral standard of all those nations who practice religion; but the results are very peculiar, as we are forced to admit that reformation in religion has not always been a reformation in morals. Take Great Britain for example; if illegitimacy is any criterion of the moral state of those professing creeds, we find the least among the Jew; next among the Catholic; next comes the Episcopalian; then last the Presbyterian,—the oldest creed showing the greatest moral tendency, and that of poor Knox, which is the youngest, showing the least. This has certainly its physical effects, that are not without its influence in producing a greater or lesser length of life. The evolution of religion has here induced a lower moral tone and a resulting physical degeneracy.
As observed by alienists, religions of different creeds have different tendencies in inducing insanity, both as to ratio of population and as to manifestations;[66] the Protestant, when unbalanced by religious cause, is generally controlled with some idea that shows itself in wild and erratic attempts at scriptural interpretation, caused by want of fixed dogmas and the unending splittings that are forever taking place in the new faith, and the persistent, intrusive, and belligerent spirit of proselytism that controls each new branch as it buds into existence. The Catholic has a fixed dogma, which the church attends to, and he neither feels called upon to make his neighbors miserable or himself insane in hunting up new interpretations. When he does go insane on the subject of religion, the cause, as a rule, can be traced to some real or imagined moral delinquency, which has brought all the terrors of the punishment of the damned forcibly and persistently to his disordered imagination. In the insane-asylums of Cork, in Ireland, with its overwhelming Catholic population, the ratio of inmates in regard to creeds is as that of one Catholic to ten of the Reformed religion, showing in the most conclusive manner the influence exerted by religion in this direction. On the other hand, the Jew has the simplest of religious creeds; he neither wastes useful time, robs himself of sleep, nor becomes dyspeptic in hunting for hidden meanings in some ambiguous scriptural phrase; he is satisfied with his creed, his dogmas are firmly anchored, and the nature of his religion being a sort of family congregation, he is not called upon to go out in search of proselytes, any more than the father of an already large family feels called upon to go out and hunt up the homeless, that he may convert his home into a promiscuous orphan-asylum. As before remarked, his creed is of the simplest, and there exists a complete and explicit understanding between his God and himself. There are no mystical, hidden meanings in Scripture for the Jew; nor does he dread any eternal, unheard-of, and inexplicable torments. His laws are very clear, and the punishments for their infraction very explicit. To the Jew it is a straight and well-lighted road, as far as religion is concerned. The writer has always felt that it took a mind that was incapable of appreciating simple truths, but that loved to hover on that mystical border-land on the confines of gloomy insanity that would allow its owner to seriously wander through and behold any theological beauties in Bunyan. To the Jew there is none of the gloomy, weird, mystical, mind-racking, ungodly theology that some of our creeds torture the poor brains of their professors with. As the wild Indian of the plains runs sticks through his anatomy and capers wildly about to torture his body, so some of the creeds delight in torturing their devotees. The Jewish religion is the one best suited to tranquilize the mind; it is very philosophical and rational. Were he to acknowledge Christ, he would not have to change his course of life to become a most exemplary Christian. The celebrated letter of Moses Mendelssohn to the Swiss clergyman, Lavater, in answer to a dedication of the latter to Mendelssohn, is probably the best exposition of the essence of the Jewish faith that can be found. Therein he says: “We believe that all other nations of the earth have been commanded by God to adhere to the laws of nature. Those who regulate their conduct according to this religion of nature and of reason are called virtuous men of other nations, and are the children of eternal salvation.” Such a religion does not unsettle man’s mind.
These apparent digressions are made to show what additional factors exist, besides circumcision, to induce longevity in the Jewish race, and that the subject may be better understood; for these reasons the above comparisons have been made. Students of demographic science are well aware that form of government, religion, climate, diet, habit, and custom,—all have an important bearing on the mental and physical as well as on the moral nature of man. To the true student of his art all these conditions are but factors in the physical scale, and should so be considered without fear or favor; to him the whole world is but a unit, and the people upon its surface are but as one people, alike subject to the leveling laws of nature, which recognize neither royalty nor vagrant, nationality nor creed, color, condition, nor station in life or society.
Professor Bernoulli, of Bale, found the Israelite less prolific than the Christian;[67] subject to less mortality, greater longevity, less still-born, less illegitimacy, less crime against the person, and less insanity and suicide, when compared with his Christian brother—all of which he attributes not to a superior physique or organism, but solely to the observance of the laws of their religion and to the nature of the same, which exercises a beneficial influence on the mind.
B. W. Richardson, in his “Diseases of Modern Life,” in speaking of the relation of race to disease, says: “Through the valuable labors of MM. Legoyt, Hoffmann, Neufville, and Mayer, we have obtained, however, some curious facts relative to the most widely disseminated of all races on the earth, the Jewish. These facts show that, from some cause or causes, this race presents an endurance against disease that does not belong to other portions of the civilized communities amongst which its members dwell. The distinctness of the Jews in the midst of other and mixed races singles them out specially for observation, and the history they present of vitality, or, in other words, of the resistance to those influences which tend to shorten the natural cycle of life, is singularly instructive.
“The resistance dates from the first to the last periods of life. Hoffmann finds that in Germany, from 1823 to 1840, the number of still-born among the Jews was as 1 in 39, while with other races it was 1 in 40. Mayer finds that in Furth children from one to five years of age die in the proportion of 10 per cent. among the Jewish, and 14 per cent. among the Christian population. M. Neufville, dealing with the same subject, from the statistics of Frankfurt, gives even a more favorable proportion of vitality to the Jewish child population. Continuing his estimates from the ages named into riper years, the value of life is still in favor of the Jews, the average duration of the life of the Jew being forty years and nine months and that of the Christian being thirty-six years and eleven months. In the total of all ages, the half of the Jews born reach the age of fifty-three years and one month, whilst half of the Christians born only reach the age of thirty-six years. A quarter of the Jewish population born is found living beyond seventy-one years, but a quarter of the Christian population is found living beyond fifty-nine years and ten months only. The Civil State extracts of Prussia give to the Jews a mortality of 1.61 per cent.; to the whole kingdom, 2.62 per cent. To the Jews they give an annual increase of 1.73 per cent.; to the Christian, 1.36 per cent. The effective of the Jews require a period of forty-one years and a half to double themselves; those of other races, fifty-one years. In 1849, Prussia returned one death for every forty-one of the Jews and one for every thirty-two of the remaining population.
“The Jews escaped the great epidemics more readily than the other races with whom they lived. Thus, the mortality from cholera amongst them is so small that the very fact of its occurrence has been disputed. Lastly, that element of mortality, suicide, which we may look upon philosophically as a phenomenon of disease, is computed by Glatter, from a proportion of one million of inhabitants of Prussia, Bavaria, Würtemburg, Austria, Hungary, and Transylvania, to have been committed by rather less than one of the Jewish race to four of the members of the mixed races of the Christian population. Different causes have been assigned for this higher vitality of the Jewish race, and it were indeed wise to seek for the causes, since that race which presents the strongest vitality, the greatest increase of life, and the longest resistance to death must in course of time become, under the influences of civilization, dominant. We see this truth, indeed, actually exemplified in the Jews; for no other known race has ever endured so much or resisted so much. Persecuted, oppressed by every imaginable form of tyranny, they have held together and lived, carrying on intact their customs, their beliefs, their faith, for centuries, until, set free at last, they flourish as if endowed with new force. They rule more potently than ever, far more potently than when Solomon in all his glory reigned in Jerusalem. They rule, and neither fight nor waste.”[68]
Richardson attributes the great benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious life is the one that is most conducive to long life. There is no race that is more proverbial for their good cheer and indulgence in the good things of the table than the Jewish; no race enjoys feasting any more than they, and from childhood they are accustomed to a generous and nutritious diet, as well as to their share of the wines with which their tables are supplied. Their greater thrift and application to business, their habits of economy and carefulness in business affairs enable them to better supply their tables. In California there is no class that lives better or whose tables are supplied so well either as to quality or quantity as those of the Jews, and yet no class is more exempt than they from the class of diseases that originate in too good living. As before remarked, in relation to the poor of that faith, who are unable to keep a servant, and who live in a combination of shop and home in the most unhygienic condition, disregarding ventilation and every other sanitary needs, but who, nevertheless, escape the evil results that would and do attend such social conditions among those of other races, so in this instance of good living: the better class of Jews do not suffer in anything near a like proportion to the better class Christians from diseases incident to too full habits and an inactive life. Richardson observes that he drinks less and that he eats better food than his Christian brother. In regard to the drinking habit, overindulgence is not a Jewish failing; they do not drink to excess, but total abstinence is not in their vocabulary. It is inconsistent with their idea of wine as being a gift of God, and something that is symbolical of good faith and thanksgiving. Nor is total abstinence consistent with their idea of generous hospitality. On the eighth day after birth the Jew tastes wine, and from the time he is able to sit at table he becomes familiar with its use. To him wine is not symbolical of either moral depravity, mental or physical deterioration, or of death. Their females are all accustomed to its use from childhood, but it does not cause them to become either immoral or unchaste; so that in neither sex does wine produce that moral and mental wreckage which abbreviates the length of human existence among those of other creeds. Radical fanaticism, that drives a tack with a maul and a twenty-penny spike with a tack-hammer, cannot be expected to study this or any other question in any rational manner; but to the sociologist, the question as to what produces this remarkable soberness, in the midst of the habitual and continued use of wine in the race from the time of its earliest history, is something worthy of calm and careful consideration. How much circumcision may have to do with this will be discussed in the medical part of the volume.
In London, according to Dr. Stallard, the mortality among Jewish children from one to five years is only ten per cent., while among the children of the Christians it is fourteen per cent., the rate being analogous to that observed by Mayer among those of these ages in Furth. Among the London adults the average duration of life among the Jews is forty-seven years, while among the Christians it is only thirty-seven.
Dr. Hough[69] has gathered some interesting historical and statistical matter bearing on the subject of Jewish resistance to disease and the benefit possessed by the race in relation to the immunity enjoyed by them in prevailing epidemics. The plague of 1346 did not affect them; according to Fracastor they escaped the typhus of 1505; Rau remarks their immunity to the typhus of 1824; Ramazzini noticed their exemption to the fatal intermittents of Rome, in 1691; and Degner says that they escaped the epidemic dysentery at Nimegue, in 1736. Richardson truly observes that “from epidemics the Jews have often escaped, as if they possessed a charmed life.” This racial difference and benefit, when compared to other races, has more than once cost them dear. In the dark and ignorant ages, when men reasoned nothing from a physical basis, but attributed all and every phenomena to some supernatural agency, either heavenly or diabolical, it was but natural for such minds to associate this exemption with some purchased compact made with the devil, who was often also held accountable for the existence of the epidemics. The rational and law-of-nature observing Jew supposed to be in league with his satanic majesty could neither be seen nor heard in his own defense; consequently, massacres, pillaging, and such other barbarities that an insane popular fury could suggest, were the humane manifestations with which a Christian people visited their Jewish brothers, whose only sin consisted in worshiping the God of their fathers, and in strictly observing His laws and commandments.