“These statements from Dr. Guinzburg are confirmed by the following letter from Dr. A. Haskins, of this city. Dr. Haskins is connected with one of the Jewish benevolent associations for the benefit of the sick. I sent to him similar questions and make the following extracts from his reply:—
“‘I am generally employed in about sixty families (Jewish). I have had these families under my care for two and a half years. During this time I have seen but one case of consumption. I have averaged among these sixty families about two visits daily. In my other Jewish practice, which is not inconsiderable, I have in this time (two and a half years) seen two cases of consumption.... I am sorry I have no statistics whereby I could compare the two peoples, viz., Jews and Christians. I can, therefore, give you only my impressions. I should say that I find consumption less frequent among the Jews than among Christians. This would be my own impression without any data to fortify it.’
“Dr. Waterman also sustains the same idea. The following extract will give some idea of his opportunities for observation and the sources of his deductions:—
“‘Boston, November 2, 1872. Dear Sir,— ... First, I have attended four charitable associations; number about forty, fifty, sixty, and one hundred families. At present I only attend one, containing one hundred families, and on which I average a fraction over one visit a day. I have, besides, many private families among the Jews. I have attended but few cases of consumption, and I think the disease is not so prevalent as among Christians.’”
The same report of Dr. Bowditch quotes from Stallard’s “London Pauperism Amongst Jews and Christians,” as saying that there is no hereditary syphilis, and scarcely any scrofula to augment the mortality in the Jewish families.
In relation to the liability of the Hebrew race to phthisis, Richardson has the following at page 22 of his “Diseases of Modern Life”: “The special inroads on vitality made on other races by disease are not easily determined, because of the difficulties arising from temporary admixture of race. I tried once to elicit some facts from a large experience of a particular disease, phthisis pulmonalis, and, as the results of this attempt may be useful, I put them briefly on record.
“At a public institution at which large numbers of persons afflicted with chest diseases applied for medical assistance, and at which I was for many years one of the physicians, I made notes during a short portion of the time of the connection that existed between race and the particular disease I have instanced—phthisis pulmonalis, or pulmonary consumption. The number of persons observed under the disease was three hundred, and no person was put on the record who was not suffering from a malady pure and simple; I mean without complication with any other malady. They who were thus studied were of four classes: (a) those who were by race distinctly Saxon; (b) those who were of mixed race, or whose race could not be determined; (c) those who were distinctly Celtic; (d) those who were distinctly Jewish.
“The results were, that of the three hundred patients, one hundred and thirty-three, 44.33 per cent., were Saxon; one hundred and eighteen, 39.33 per cent., were of mixed or undetermined race; thirty-one, 10.33 per cent., were Celtic; and eighteen, 6 per cent., were Jewish.”
Although Dr. Richardson admits it would be unfair to accept the above figures as a basis for general application, he argues that they are, on the average, sufficiently suggestive, as among the Saxons it was noticed that there were more cases in whom the disease was hereditary, while among the others it was generally acquired.
In going over the subject of this question in regard to phthisis, we must admit that, although the Jew in his own home, synagogue, or in his social reunions, is not exposed to tubercular emanations, and that he has less chance of contracting the disease from tuberculous meats, he is, after all, a theatre-goer; a pretty constant inhabitant of the sleeping-car and hotel, as a commercial traveler and general merchant; and that, on the whole, he eats the same food, breathes the air and dust of the same streets, and drinks the same milk and water as the Christian, and, as observed by Dr. Billings, cooking destroys the bacillus in meats. So that the comparative exposure in this country—where the practice is not as prevalent as in Germany of eating raw minced-meat sandwiches—existing between the Jew and the Christian to tubercular infection from meat are about equal. The records of the Jewish Hospital of New York gives, out of 28,750 persons admitted, only 44.17 per 1000 of its admissions as being due to consumption; while those of the Roosevelt Hospital, out of 25,583 admissions, gives a per 1000 of 67.93.