From what is known of the relation of syphilis to consumption, not only as affecting the primary individual, but the subsequent generations of the same, and the known greater exemption of the Jew to syphilitic infection, owing to the protecting influence of circumcision, it is safe to assert that therein is to be found one of the main reasons of the exemption of that race to consumption. If we but look at the geographical distribution of phthisis and the history of its progress, we shall find that it has had syphilis as its avant courrier on more than one occasion. Lancereaux, in his “Distribution of Pulmonary Phthisis,” points to the fact that where consumption has made its greatest ravages, and where it has nearly depopulated one of the great divisions of the globe,—namely, the groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean,—the disease had no existence at the beginning of the present century. Syphilis, scrofula, and a quick, galloping consumption have, since the last ninety years, taken off the greater part of the population. The same course of transition from the best of physical conditions to racial deterioration and extinction from the same relative condition of causes—syphilis, scrofula, and phthisis—has been observed among the open-air dwellers of the New Mexican Plains, in the mountains of Arizona, and on the arid wastes of the Colorado Desert, where the appearance of consumption cannot be attributed to housing or incipient civilization, as it is attributed to housing among the Chippeways, Sioux, or Mandans in the regions that formerly formed the Northwest Territory. The question is very plainly answered as to how consumption was introduced or whence it sprung that has so ravaged the Oceanic Islands. The sailors who first visited those islands were not, as a rule, a batch of consumptive tourists on a voyage in search of health or recreation; but we can well understand that the proverbially improvident mariner has not always had his health looked after by an Anson or a Cook, and that many a festive tar who induced the unsophisticated Indian maid to join him in worship at the shrine of Venus Porcina carried in the innermost recesses of the folds of his pendulous and sea-beaten prepuce the remnants of former Bacchanalian festivities performed in the questionable temples of Venus and Bacchus in Portsmouth or London. Consumption, as such, was neither imported nor propagated by Europeans into those islands, its original entry being in the shape of syphilis. Had it been the ancient mariners of old Phœnicia in the days of its circumcision, or the circumcised marines of the ancient Atlantean fleets from the sunken continent of Plato, instead of the uncircumcised sailors of modern England, that first and since visited those islands, it is safe to say that consumption would not now exist there. From this, it may be well to inquire what would be the relation between the Jewish race and consumption; were circumcision among them to be done away with, would it not be greatly on the increase?
The weight of testimony is evidently convincing that the Jew has a greater longevity and stronger resistance to disease, as well as a less liability to physical ills, than other races; that all these exemptions or benefits are not altogether due to social customs is evident; how much circumcision may have to do in inducing these favorable conditions can be better appreciated by a consideration of how circumcision affects those of other races, and more particularly how its performance works changes in the individual in his general health and condition, and in doing away with many physical ailments that the individual was previously subjected to. So that the Jew cannot be said to be a loser by his observance of this rite, and he and his race have been well repaid for all the sufferings and persecutions that its observance has subjected them to. As observed by John Bell, “The preservation of health and the attainment of long life are objects of desire to every man, no matter in what age or country his lot is cast, nor by what arbitrary tenure he holds his life. They are the wish of the master and the slave, of the illiterate and the learned, of the timid Hindoo and the warlike Arab, of the natives of New Zealand not less than of the inhabitants of New England,—an indispensable condition for the greatest and longest enjoyment of the senses and propensities; for the widest range and exercise of intellect and gratification of the sentiments, whether these be lofty or ignoble, health, in any special degree, has ever been a fit subject of contemplation and instruction by the philosopher and legislator. Their advice and edicts on the means of preserving it have frequently been enforced as a part of religious duty, and, at all times, civilization, even in its elementary forms, has been marked by laws on this head. With the numerous and minute hygienic enactments of the great Jewish lawgiver for the guidance of the people of Israel we are all familiar. Prompted, we may suppose, in part by the example of Moses, and also by considerations growing out of the nature of the climate in which he lived, Mohammed incorporated with the mingled reveries, ethics, and blasphemies, which composed his Koran, dietetic rules and observances of regimen that are to this day implicitly obeyed by his zealous followers.”[71]
If circumcision is not a factor in the difference that exists between the Jewish race and other races, if it goes for nothing as an exemptor of disease and the promoter of longevity, then there must exist some other factor or cause that induces these conditions. What this factor is, the legislator, the sociologist, and the physician should make it their business to find out.
CHAPTER XV.
Predisposition to and Exemption and Immunity from Disease.
The peculiar differences that exist between different animals in regard to their susceptibility to the action of drugs is even more remarkable than the differences that exist in their susceptibility to certain forms of disease. We can understand and appreciate what Koch tells us in regard to the different susceptibilities exhibited by the house-mice and the field-mice to the anthrax bacillus, or why a nursing child should offer different results, when exposed to the diphtheria bacillus or the contagious poison of any of the exanthemata, from those witnessed in the meat or promiscuously dieted child. We can also appreciate that different individuals have different susceptibilities to disease, as well as we understand that the same degree is not always in an unvarying point of resistance or susceptibility in the same individual. The investigation and study of these conditions teach us, however, that there is a cause, or that there are causes that induce and modify this susceptibility. But there are conditions that are as yet beyond our comprehension. Take, for instance, two animals, both vertebrates, mammals, and dwelling together, eating the same food, and even having a mutual understanding or sympathy of mind and affections, having a like circulation, a like brain and nervous system, it would naturally be supposed that these two would exhibit a like susceptibility to the actions of narcotic poisons; but when we are told that one dog has taken 21 grains of atropia with impunity we are staggered. Atropia may not affect rabbits (as it does not), but the rabbit does not approach man in the same close relationship as the dog. Richardson administered to a healthy young cat 7 drachms of Battley’s solution of opium, then 10 grains of morphia, and a little later 20 grains more of morphia without rendering the cat unconscious. The same experimenter gave to a pigeon 21, 30, and 40, then 50 grains of powdered opium on succeeding days with no bad effect. S. Weir Mitchell gave to three pigeons, respectively, 272 drops of black drop, 21 grains of powdered opium, and 3 grains of morphia without any effect.[72] On the other hand, horses show a like susceptibility to man to the action of drugs. In the island of Ceylon, a sloth can take 10 grains of strychnia with safety,—chickens presenting a like immunity to the poisonous effects of this alkaloid. While the dog offers such a contrast to the action of drugs as compared to man, he is as subject to goitre, and they have been seen in a true state of cretinism.[73]
An Apache, or Colorado Indian, will prefer a dessert of decomposed gophers to one composed of the best canned peaches or Bartlett pears; he will devour the mass without any resulting evil, while a German—after many generations of training on all forms of sausages in every degree of age and ripeness, and on every form of cheese, from the refreshing cottage cheese from curdled milk and the delicious cream cheese, down through to all and every grade as far as Limburgher, or maggoty, common cheese—has not, in every case overcome the tendency of the civilized intestine and constitution to the action of sausage poison, something that has no effect on the ordinary Indian, or on the uncivilized dweller north of the arctic circle. Even the house-dog, that faithful companion of man, in many cases living on exactly the same fare as his master, is insensible to the action of this poison. An Indian will gorge and gormandize, after a prolonged fast, on such quantities and qualities of food that, if the ordinary white man were to indulge in a like feast, he would be in imminent danger of literal rupture or explosion, or liable to end in sudden apoplectic seizures, or, in case of a too healthy and active digestion, liable, owing to a lack of a correspondingly active condition of the excretory organs, to go off in uræmic coma. This sporadic and fitful feasting has no perceptible effect on the Indian, who either simply works it off in exercise, or sleeps it off in a long and prolonged period of sleep, during which his lungs work with the deep and steady pull and persistence that a tug-boat exhibits when towing in a large ship against the tide and a head wind,—working in and out more air in one respiration than the ordinary white man will in a dozen. All these different conditions are more or less plain to us and as easy of explanation,—just as plain as to how and why some birds eat gravel to improve their digestion. In the cases of different susceptibility to the action of strychnia or of narcotics, the explanation must of necessity, for the present, be more or less speculative. But how are we to account, even in the way of speculation, for the peculiar immunity, lack of predisposition and hereditary tendencies to disease exhibited by the Hebrew, who, since the history of the world, has been a civilized and rational being,—even for decades of centuries before the civilization of Europe? Living under the same forms of government, climate, and shelter, practically using the same varieties of food and drink, he exhibits an entirely different vitality and resistance to disease, decay, and death,—being, in fact, a puzzle to the demographic student. The only really marked difference that exists between this race and the others lies in the fact that the Hebrew is circumcised, other differences not being sufficiently constant to be accounted as factors. Circumcision is, in the opinion of the writer, the real cause of the differences in longevity and faculty for the enjoyment of life that the Hebrew enjoys in contrast to his Christian brother. Christian and uncircumcised races may individually, or in classes, develop some peculiar immunity or exemption, as, for instance, the tolerance to arsenic exhibited by some German mountaineers, or the peculiar safety enjoyed by the butcher class from attacks of continued fever;[74] but these exemptions are purchased at the expense of the future, the effects of arsenic, long continued, finally having its morbid effects, and the very plethora which is the bulwark of resistance in the butcher, this plethora being in the end a treacherous foe, diseases result from it which make a sudden ending to this class when it is least expected.
For an all around long-liver the Hebrew holds a pre-eminence, and, as the factor in this pre-eminence, circumcision has no counter-claimant. Circumcision is like a substantial and well-secured life-annuity; every year of life you draw the benefit, and it has not any drawbacks or after-claps. Parents cannot make a better paying investment for their little boys, as it insures them better health, greater capacity for labor, longer life, less nervousness, sickness, loss of time, and less doctor-bills, as well as it increases their chances for an euthanasian death.