History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Part 6

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 d.a.m.ned 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 anch.o.r.ed, 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 G.o.d 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, unG.o.dly 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mcision, 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, Wurtemburg, 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s that lives better or whose tables are supplied so well either as to quality or quant.i.ty as those of the Jews, and yet no cla.s.s is more exempt than they from the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of Jews do not suffer in anything near a like proportion to the better cla.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 s.e.x 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 circ.u.mcision 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 a.n.a.logous 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 a.s.sociate 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, ma.s.sacres, 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 wors.h.i.+ping the G.o.d of their fathers, and in strictly observing His laws and commandments.

In France, Dr. Neufville found that, of one hundred children in the first five years of life, among the Jewish population, 12.9 die; while from the same number of the same aged cla.s.s of Christians 24.1 die.

One-half of all the Christians die at thirty-six years, and one-half of all the Jews at fifty-three years and one month.

Dr. John S. Billings has gathered statistics relating to 10,618 Jewish families, consisting of 60,630 persons,[70] living in the United States in December, 1889, mostly descendants of Jews from the northern or middle nations of Europe. For our purpose only the deductions as to death-rate and tendency to longevity will be given. In this valuable paper Dr. Billings says: "When we come to examine the reports of deaths for five years furnished by these Jewish families, we find that they give an average annual death-rate of only 7.1 per 1000, which would be about one-half of the annual death-rate among other persons of the same average social cla.s.s and condition living in this country." To this he adds that, provided the deaths at different ages among the Jews have been correctly reported, this race will, on comparison with those of other races, show a greater tendency to longevity, as the Jewish expectation of life is at each age markedly greater than that of the cla.s.s of people who insure their lives, the average excess being a little over twenty per cent.

In speaking of the death-rate among children, Dr. Billings makes the following comparisons: "The low death-rate among the Jews is especially marked among the children, and this corresponds to European experience. Thus in Prussia, in 1887, the death-rate of the Jews under fifteen years of age was 5.63 for 1000, while among the remainder of the people it was 10.46 per 1000." This result he accounts for partly to the fact that among the Jews illegitimacy is comparatively rare and to the high rate of mortality among the illegitimate born, which raises the average of the other cla.s.ses.

In regard to the immunity of the race from consumption or tubercular disease, the statistics of the above Jewish families gives to the Jews less than one-third of the number of deaths from these diseases than what occurs among the others as to the male population, and less than one-fourth as to the female population. These statistics coincide with the observations of the writer on this part of the subject, and are even more than corroborated by the French War-Office Reports from Algeria, where the deaths from consumption among the Christians amount to 1 for each 9.3 deaths, and among the Jews to 1 in 36.9, while among the Mohammedans it is only 1 in 40.7 deaths. In Algeria the relative mortality from all causes is only about three-fifths of that of the Christian, and the Turk, although seeming to enjoy a greater exemption from phthisical or tubercular diseases than the Jew, falls below the Jew in exemption from deaths due to general causes, as his mortality is one-eighth greater than that of the Jew. Dr. Billings gives us some interesting food for thought in the course of his article and some more particularly bearing on the subject of immunity from consumption. He asks: "Are these differences due to race characteristics, properly so-called, to original and inherited differences in bodily organization, or are they, rather, to be attributed to the customs, habits, and modes of life of the two cla.s.ses of people?"

Some years ago, Henry I. Bowditch, of Boston, put on foot an extended system of inquiry in regard to ascertaining the causes or antecedents of consumption in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. In answer to some of the questions of the circular, Rabbi Dr. Guinzburg, of Boston, answered as follows, under date of October 29, 1872:--

1st. The number of Jews living in Boston is about 5000.

2d. There certainly have not died of consumption, during the last five years, more than eight or ten Jews in the various congregations.

To this Dr. Bowditch adds, as follows:--

"If Dr. Guinzburg's data be correct, they show a very great immunity from consumption on the part of the Jews, compared with the citizens generally, as will be seen by the following comparison between these numbers and those procured from the Registration Reports, published by the State. In the report published in 1869, page 64, we find that for the five years preceding 1869 the annual average of deaths by consumption was 338 for every 100,000 living. These data from Dr.

Guinzburg and the State Report give the following table:--

Proportion of Deaths to 100,000 of Living.

All religions, 338 Jews, 40

"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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociations; 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 inst.i.tution at which large numbers of persons afflicted with chest diseases applied for medical a.s.sistance, 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 cla.s.ses: (_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.

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 circ.u.mcision, it is safe to a.s.sert 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 Baccha.n.a.lian 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 Phoenicia in the days of its circ.u.mcision, or the circ.u.mcised marines of the ancient Atlantean fleets from the sunken continent of Plato, instead of the uncirc.u.mcised 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 circ.u.mcision 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 circ.u.mcision may have to do in inducing these favorable conditions can be better appreciated by a consideration of how circ.u.mcision 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 ign.o.ble, 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 circ.u.mcision 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 ma.s.s 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tution 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 quant.i.ties 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 uraemic 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 s.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mcised, other differences not being sufficiently constant to be accounted as factors. Circ.u.mcision 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 uncirc.u.mcised races may individually, or in cla.s.ses, develop some peculiar immunity or exemption, as, for instance, the tolerance to a.r.s.enic exhibited by some German mountaineers, or the peculiar safety enjoyed by the butcher cla.s.s from attacks of continued fever;[74] but these exemptions are purchased at the expense of the future, the effects of a.r.s.enic, 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 cla.s.s 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, circ.u.mcision has no counter-claimant.

Circ.u.mcision 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.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PREPUCE, SYPHILIS, AND PHTHISIS.

It is not alone the tight-constricted, glans-deforming, onanism-producing, cancer-generating prepuce that is the particular variety of prepuce that is at the bottom of the ills and ailments, local or const.i.tutional, that may affect man through its presence. The loose, pendulous prepuce, or even the prepuce in the evolutionary stage of disappearance, that only loosely covers one-half of the glans, is as dangerous as his long and constricted counterpart. If we look over the world's history, since in the latter years of the fifteenth century syphilis came down like a plague, walking with democratic tread through all walks and stations in life, laying out alike royalty or the vagrant, the curled-haired and slashed-doubleted knight, or the tonsured monk, we must conclude that syphilis has caused more families to become extinct than any ordinary plague, black death, or cholera epidemic. Without wis.h.i.+ng to enter into a history of syphilis, it is not outside of the province of this book to allude to its frequency and spread.

Syphilis is not restricted to cla.s.ses by any means; it is not those of the lower cla.s.s alone who are its victims. Dr. Fr. J. Behrend, in his work, "Die Prost.i.tution in Berlin," observes that abolition of the brothels in that city in 1845, '46, '47 and '48, trebled the number of cases of syphilis treated at the Der Charite; in the year 1848 the cases of syphilis treated at that hospital numbered over 1800. It was also remarked during this period of legally-enforced virtue, that, as inconsistently as it might appear, the disease invaded the best of families. From Dr. Neumann, in his brochure ent.i.tled "Die Berliner Syphilisfrage," published in 1852, we learn that, in the Trades and Mechanics' Benevolent Union of Berlin, in 1849, 13.51 per cent. of the sick were so from syphilis.