13 | The Comparative Pathology of the Jews
Maurice Fishberg
“The Comparative Pathology of the Jews,” New York
Medical Journal 73 (1901): 537–43 and 576–82.
For biographical information on Maurice Fishberg, see the note at the beginning of selection 3.
The influence of race and nationality on the susceptibility and comparative (because we know of no absolute) immunity to the various diseases that afflict mankind is at present well recognized by the medical profession. The physicians of the United States have especially studied the comparative pathology of the Negro race, owing to the fact that these people are to be found in relatively great numbers, particularly in the southern states. The total number of Jews in the United States at present is estimated to be 1,058,135;1 and it is quite surprising that, on consulting the most important medical journals published in the United States, I have been unable to find any article on the comparative pathology of these people, excepting a few scattered notes and remarks. The literature on this subject in Europe is also very meager, and many difficulties have been met with while collecting the materials for the following paper.
All over Europe, wherever tested, the Jews have been found, in spite of their frail physical aspect, to live longer than the Christians. Thus we find that in Budapest, Hungary, the average duration of life of the Christian population in the city is twenty-six years; that of the Jews, thirty-seven years. The Christians between the ages of one and fifty have a death rate of 14 percent, the Jews one of only 10 percent. Among the Christian population, 50 percent of all newborn children will reach the age of thirty years; from the Jewish population, 50 percent will reach the age of fifty years. Eight percent of Jews reach the age of from eighty-five to ninety years, while only 2.4 percent of the Christians reach this age. Twelve percent of the Jewish population have reached the age of from sixty to seventy years, while only 9.8 percent of Christians have reached this age.2
In Prussia, according to Mulhall,3 the death rate has been found to be, yearly per 1,000 population:
TABLE 13.1
In Austria the number of births among the Jews has been calculated to exceed that of the deaths in 30.80 percent, and among the rest of the population as only 28.30 percent.4
In Amsterdam the mortality of children under five years of age has been found to be: among Christians, 11.52 percent; among Jews, only 8.85 percent. The death rate of adults, of the ages between twenty and fifty years, [is] for Christians, 5.98 percent; for Jews, only 3.06 percent.5
Table II [13.2] shows the relation of births and deaths among Jews. In Algiers we find that in 1856 there were:6
TABLE 13.2
The excess of births over deaths among the Jews is quite evident.
In Rumania, where the Jews are found to be in numbers almost equal to that of the Christians, we find that7 during three years the births and deaths were as in Table III [13.3]:
TABLE 13.3
We see from these figures that in 1884 the proportion of births among the Jews was 2.10 to one death, while the births among Christians were only 1.62 to one death. Almost a similar proportion can be reduced from the other figures given above.
We thus see that, almost all over Europe, the Jews enjoy an unprecedented tenacity of life, showing a lower death rate and an excess of the number of births over deaths. Another important fact is that, almost everywhere, the Jews, at present, show a proportionately smaller marriage rate, and produce relatively a less number of children to each marriage than Christians. This fact goes to prove that it is his longevity that gives the Jew his unprecedented tenacity of life over that of the Christians, and not the number of marriages and births. Thus, in Prussia, the Jewish population, from 1822 to 1840, increased 34.5 percent, while, in the same lapse of time, the Christians augmented only 28 percent, increase by immigration being about the same [among Jews and Christians]. There was one birth to every twenty-eight Jews, one to every twenty-five Christians; one marriage among every 139 Jews, one among 112 Christians; one death among forty Jews, one in thirty-four Christians.8
[. . .]
On carefully considering the above facts and figures, we are forced to agree with W. L. Ripley that the Jews show an “unprecedented tenacity of life.” This is more forcibly depicted by Dr. John S. Billings in his “Report on the Vital Statistics of the Jews in the United States”9 by a table of the expectation of life of the Jews in the United States, as compared with that for England and the average American population of Massachusetts. From that table we find that a young Jewish child of five years would have, on an average, about sixty-two years more to live; the average Americans of Massachusetts, only fifty-three years; a Jew at the age of twenty-five would have, on an average, forty-five more years to live; an American, only thirty-nine years; etc.
The experience of European observers about the low death rate of the Jews, as compared with that of non-Jews, is thus fairly well sustained by the United States census. It is only surprising that very few physicians of those who practice among these people [the Jews] are aware of this fact.
Dr. Glatter,10 the director of the statistical bureau of Vienna, gives the following table [13.7] illustrating the relative frequency of disease among different races in the same locality:
TABLE 13.7
| Inhabitants | Number ill | Number to 1,000 |
| Magyars | 6,034 | 534 |
| Germans | 3,806 | 223 |
| Slavonians | 1,522 | 182 |
| Servians [sic] | 252 | 28 |
| Jews | 1,540 | 32 |
These figures show that the Jews are relatively less liable to be attacked by disease.
When we turn again to the causes of death among the Jews, we find that the most dangerous diseases, as tuberculosis, pneumonia, nephritis, typhoid, malaria, etc. (except diabetes), claim a proportionately smaller number of victims from among the Jews than from among non-Jews. The testimony of many European physicians proves, also, that most of the epidemic diseases kill, proportionately, a smaller number of Jews than of non-Jews. Thus the mortality of children from small-pox in Posen during twenty-six years was: Catholics, 3.13 percent; Protestants, 2.26 percent; Jews, only 0.9 percent.11
This may be due to the fact that the Jews submit more readily to vaccination than non-Jews (as can be readily seen even in New York, where they flock to the health board for that purpose proportionately more frequently than Christians); but on consulting the reports of epidemics of other diseases we arrive to almost the same results. For instance, Tschudi, in speaking of the plague in 1346, says that this disease did not affect the Jews of any country. Fracastor mentions the fact that the Jews escaped completely the epidemic of typhus of 1505. Rau mentions the same immunity from typhus observed at Langeons in 1824. Ramazzini insisted on the immunity of Jews from the intermittent fevers observed in Rome in 1691. Degner says that the Jews escaped, in 1736, the epidemic of dysentery of Nimegue. Michael Levy remarks that this immunity was manifest at the same time in the French and in the Israelites.12
During the epidemic of cholera in Budapest, in 1851, there was a mortality of 1.85 percent among the Christian population, while the Jews succumbed only to the extent of 0.257 percent—i.e., seven times less;13 a writer in the Revue scientifique14 states that during the epidemic of cholera in London, in the seventies, the Jews remained almost not at all affected. Again, in Algiers, notwithstanding the fact that the Jews are crowded in small and dark dwellings, often in basements, they still are more resistant to the effects of contagious diseases than non-Jews, as can be seen from the following figures.15 During the epidemic of cholera the mortality was found to be as in Table VIII [13.8]:
TABLE 13.8
MORTALITY PER 1,000 POPULATION DURING THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN ALGIERS
| 1844 | 1845 | |
| Europeans | 42.9 | 45.5 |
| Mussulmans | 32.4 | 40.8 |
| Jews | 21.6 | 36.1 |
This peculiar resistance of the Jews to the noxious effects of contagious disease has been noted already in the Middle Ages, especially during the great epidemics in Europe of the plague known then as the “Black Death.” At that time they suffered severely, because of the fact that they were affected by the pestilence to a less degree and had a proportionately smaller mortality than the Christians. The Jews were accused of being the special emissaries of Satan in causing the plague; it was said that their immunity was due to a special protection by Satan as a compensation for the services they rendered him by their wholesale poisoning of the wells; the use of poisoned water was thought the cause of the Christians being attacked by plague. By torturing and murdering the Jews, and especially by confiscating their property, it was thought that the Almighty might be propitiated, the terrible scourge driven from good Christian countries, and Satan thwarted. As a result of this, hundreds of thousands of Jews were burned or otherwise killed. The plague disappeared in due time—of course only after killing 25,000,000, a quarter of the population of Europe at that period.
Such immunity of the Jews to contagious diseases is not observed at the present time; during the late epidemic of cholera in 1892–94, in Russia, it has been observed that the Jews were no more spared by the pestilence than their non-Jewish neighbors, and that in some cities the Jews were even more affected than the Christians. But the percentage of deaths from a given number of cases has, as a rule, been smaller among the Jews than among non-Jews. Thus, Dr. Barazhnikoff reported to the St. Petersburg Medical Society in 1894 that, during the epidemic of cholera in the government Mogileff [the city of Mogilev], the morbidity among the Jews was greater, and the disease, as a rule, ran a severer course, than among the Christians. But the percentage of mortality was smaller among the Jews. He adds that the fact must not be forgotten that the Jews in that locality are more intelligent than the Christians and take more care of their health, although they are generally poorer.16
[. . .]
The various other acute infectious diseases, diseases of the respiratory and urinary systems, of the liver, and nervous system, according to the Report on Vital Statistics of the Eleventh Census of the United States, claim a proportionately smaller number of deaths from among the Jews than from among the non-Jews. And, according to Dr. John S. Billings’ “Report on the Vital Statistics of the Jews in the United States,” we find that “the Jews have suffered a relatively greater loss than their neighbors, by deaths from diphtheria, diarrheal diseases, diseases of the nervous system (and especially diseases of the spinal cord), of the circulatory system, bones and joints, and of the skin, while their mortality has been relatively less from the tubercular diseases, including consumption, scrofula, tabes, and hydrocephalus, than the other people with whom they are compared.”
Alcoholism and syphilis are diseases that are very rare among Jews. During the six years ending May 31, 1890, alcoholism caused in each 100,000 persons, of each race in New York, 31 deaths annually among the Irish, 10 among the Germans, 9 among the Americans, 6 among the Negroes, 3 among the Italians, and only 1 among the Russian and Polish (Jews). This may give us a clue to the reason why the Jews suffered such a small loss through nephritis, as the following figures show: during the same six years nephritis caused in each 100,000 persons, of each race in New York, 142 deaths among the Irish, 67 among the Germans, 54 among the Americans, 27 among the Italians, and 18 among the Russian and Polish (Jews).
That syphilis is relatively infrequent among the Jews has been observed almost all over Europe. Thus, according to Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, syphilis is less common among Jews than among Christians; at the Metropolitan Free Hospital, in the Jews’ quarter of London, in 1854, the proportion of Jews to Christians among the outpatients was nearly one to three, yet the ratio of cases of syphilis in the former to those in the latter was only one to fifteen, and that this difference was not due to their superior chastity was evident from the fact that the Jews furnished nearly one-half of the cases of gonorrhea that were treated during the same period.17
Dr. A. Cohen, late senior house surgeon of the Metropolitan Free Hospital in London, has, at the request of Mr. Joseph Jacobs, collected the statistics of venereal diseases that came to this hospital during his service in 1882–83, and has found that the proportion of Christian to Jewish patients affected with syphilis has been as three to one.18
We have not exact statistics as to the frequency of syphilis among the Jews in the United States, but the testimony of physicians practicing among this people goes to show that, while among the Jews syphilis is often met with, it is not so frequently encountered as among non-Jews.
The fact that the Jews are not very often attacked by alcoholism and syphilis has a very important bearing upon the comparative pathology of their people. Besides the fact that this is one of the reasons that nephritis and diseases of the liver (especially cirrhosis) are less commonly met with, the varieties of nervous diseases to which the Jews are most liable are also determined by these factors, as we shall see later in this paper.
A disease from which the Jews suffer more than any other nationality is diabetes. It is extremely frequent among the Jews in large cities, according to Bordier;19 out of 400 patients suffering from diabetes, Frerichs found that 100 were Jews—i.e., 25 percent. Osler,20 Strümpell,21 Naunyn,22 Saundby,23 and most other observers say that the Jews are especially prone to this disease.
Dr. Heinrich Stern,24 in an exhaustive analysis of the mortality from diabetes in the city of New York in 1899, states that “the Hebrews, no doubt, are more commonly affected with chronic glycosuria than natives among whom they dwell. Out of the total of 202 deaths (from diabetes in New York City in 1899), fifty-four—that is, 25 percent—occurred in Jews. Of these, twenty-one were males, and thirty-three females.” Dr. Stern further intimates that while “mental exertion, the characteristic modes of living, gluttony, alcoholic intoxication, etc., might be considered predisposing factors in the production of the diabetic state,” it is his opinion that “the cardinal predisposing cause is the breeding in and in to which, in a very pronounced measure, the Jewish, as well as the Irish, race still adheres.”
Dr. R. Saundby, again, states that the frequency of diabetes among the Jews is to be ascribed to the following cause: “The Jew raises himself easily, by his superior mental ability, to a comfortable social position, and notoriously avoids all kinds of bodily exercises.”25 This cause cannot hold good for the mortality from diabetes of the Jews in New York. As Dr. H. Stern has shown, 25 percent of the deaths from diabetes in New York are found to be in Jews; and, examining the original death certificates in New York City for 1899, “almost 70 percent of deaths occurred in tenement houses, 15 percent occurred in hospital practice and coroner’s cases, and only 15 percent in private houses. This tends to show that the malady has virtually little to do with high living.”26 Furthermore, the New York Jews living in tenements are hard-working people—working long hours in sweatshops, having a sufficient amount of bodily exercise, so that the cause that Saundby assigns for the prevalence of diabetes is not operative among them.
C. Van Noorden, in a recent paper on diabetes,27 states that it is his belief that the cause of the frequency of diabetes among Jews is the close intermarriage among them. Consanguineous marriages are really more frequent among Jews than among Christians,28 and this fact has been very much exploited by medical writers, who have attributed to it all the ills the Jews are liable to. We shall return to this question later in this article.
As to the other diseases to which the Jews are more or less predisposed, the various nervous and mental diseases stand out preeminently; after these come the diseases of metabolism, called by French authors arthritism and herpetism—for instance, gout, gallstones and nephrolithiasis, chronic rheumatism, some forms of neuralgia and migraine, asthma, pulmonary emphysema, varicose veins, and especially hemorrhoids, arteriosclerosis, and some diseases of the skin. Finally, some authors state that blindness, colorblindness, myopia, trachoma, glaucoma, and almost all the skin diseases are more frequent among the Jews than among the non-Jews.
Concerning the frequency of nervous and mental diseases among the Jews, the evidence is overwhelmingly abundant. It appears that the ancient Hebrews were already great sufferers of hysteria and insanity, as can be seen by many statements in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, where it is mentioned that numbers of people “possessed with devils,” lunatics, “men with unclean spirits,” etc., called upon Christ for relief and that He cured them (see particularly Matthew 8:16, 9:32, 12:22, 17:15; Mark 5:2; Luke 8:27, 13:11; and in many other places).
In modern times Charcot, Lancereaux, Oppenheim, Erb, Strümpel, Jolly, Möbius, Krafft-Ebing, Löwenfeld, Müller, Binswanger, Putnam, Collins, and many others have observed this fact and speak of it in their textbooks and monographs. Neurasthenia and hysteria are mostly found among the Jews. Some authors have even stated that the majority of the Jews are neurasthenics and that most of the [Jewish] women are hysterical. Thus Raymond29 states that hysteria is frequent among both men and women in Warsaw (Poland). The Jewish population of that city alone is almost exclusively the inexhaustible source for the supply of hysterical males for the whole continent. “Among the European nations,” says Dr. Binswanger,30 “the Jews supply, relatively, the largest contingent of neurasthenics”; according to Dr. Jolly,31 “the Jews have a hysterical and especially nervous disposition to an overwhelming degree.” “Nervous diseases, especially neurasthenia,” says Krafft-Ebing,32 “affect the Jews with exceptional severity.”
Dr. James J. Putnam33 states that “the psychoneuroses in general are particularly common in the Latin and Hebrew races.” Dr. Joseph Collins and Dr. C. Philips,34 analyzing 333 cases of neurasthenia which came under their observation, have found that more than 40 percent of the patients were of the Jewish race, although “their clientèle was not conspicuously foreign.”
Mental diseases occur more frequently among the Jews than among non-Jews. It has been asserted by many competent and reliable observers that the Jews supply proportionately from two to five times more mental defectives than the Christians. Thus Lombroso35 shows that the Jews in Italy had, in 1869, one lunatic to 391 of their people—that is, almost four times more [a rate four times higher] than the Catholics in that country. Verga confirmed this in 1879, and stated that there were:
One lunatic to 1,775 Catholics; 1,725 Protestants; 385 Jews.
[. . .]
All the statistics show plainly the frightful disposition of the Jews to insanity and idiocy. We shall speak of the causes of this peculiarity of the Jews hereafter in this paper, when discussing the causes of the comparative pathology of the Jews in general.
[. . .]
The frequency of functional nervous diseases in the Jew, as we have seen before, is attested by most of the observers on both continents. He is most liable to the diseases of our age—neurasthenia and hysteria; he has the distinction of having his nervous system predominating over his muscular. The Jews are far less muscular than nervous, probably because they are the most brainy, having lived for centuries only on the products of their brains; and, therefore, having for two thousand years overstrained their nervous system, they very easily become disordered, “out of gear,” and even collapse entirely; a fatigued organ is easily disturbed in its function.
“The nervous derangements which are the effect of psychic trauma,” says H. Oppenheim,36 “explain to some extent the reason why the Jewish race—after being persecuted and oppressed, mostly only tolerated among the nations, living in peace for short times only, and then again tormented—is suffering in such immense numbers from the neuroses and psychoses, and particularly hysteria.”
[. . .]
Of the great number of other diseases which were, at one time or another, supposed to have been of more frequent occurrence among Jews than among Christians, we will but name gout and chronic rheumatism, and also various eruptions on the skin, especially psoriasis. French authors, as Charcot, Lancereaux, Féré, and many others, find a close connection between the neuroses and what they call “arthritisms” and “herpetisms,” including under these names a number of diseases and conditions, as gout, lithemia, chronic rheumatism, psoriasis, diabetes, gallstones, nephrolithiasis, etc., all of which occur in people of a nervous diathesis. They describe all these affictions as occurring very often among the Jews. “The pathological history of the Jewish race,” says Charles Féré,37 “is particularly favorable for the observation of the following fact: nowhere else do we see so clearly the close connection which exists between the neuroses and the arthritisms, which are especially represented by gout and diabetes and the nervous diseases. Neurasthenia manifests itself in the Jews in its most complex forms.”
Physicians who practice extensively among the Jews do not generally notice that the Jews are more prone to herpetism, gout, etc., than Christians. The case is, as we have seen, different with the functional neuroses and diabetes.
Varicose veins, and particularly hemorrhoids, occur very frequently among the Jews, probably more often than among Christians. It is a fact that can be attested by most of the physicians practicing among these people, that a very great proportion of Jews who have passed the fourth decade [of life] have their hemorrhoidal veins more or less enlarged. The various forms of visceral hernias appear also to be very frequent among the Jews.
According to Dr. Hardy38 and many others, Jews are more often affected by eczema than non-Jews; but dermatologists with extensive practices among Jews and Christians inform me that the Jews in the United States are not any more liable than any other nationality to this disease.
Of the affictions of the eyes, the Jews are said to be more liable to blindness, colorblindness, astigmatism, trachoma, glaucoma, and, according to M. Hervé,39 there is a frequency of lacrymal tumors among the Jews, due to the narrowness of their nasal canal.
Concerning blindness, Dr. Herman Cohen40 brings the following statistics for Bavaria:
Percent Among 10,000 Protestants 7.2 blind 10,000 Catholics 8.2 10,000 Jews 13.8 and for Prussia, in 1880: Percent Among 10,000 Protestants 8.2 blind 10,000 Catholics 8.4 10,000 Jews 11.0
There are similar statistics showing the frequent occurrence of blindness among the Jews in the various other European countries.
According to the “Report of the Committee on Colorblindness” of the Ophthalmological Society of London,41 the Jews are more subject than the ordinary population to colorblindness. Among 730 Jewish women examined, 3.1 percent were found affected; and among 949 Jewish males, 4.9 percent. The report adds that the Jews were, on the whole, of a poor condition of life, and their defects were of pronounced character. Jacobs and Spielman42 found no less than 12.7 percent of London Jews to be colorblind. Fuchs and many others mention that trachoma and glaucoma are very often met with among Jews. “In many countries the Jews are special sufferers from trachoma,” says Fuchs,43 and he ascribes it to the fact that they live in crowded houses and are uncleanly. About glaucoma, the same opthalmologist says that “among Jews inflammatory glaucoma is more frequent than among Christians.”44
Of the many other diseases considered to be more common among Jews than non-Jews we will not speak here, because the writers who have described these peculiarities either have not substantiated their statements with facts, or their evidence is inadequate and is not borne out by experience among the Jews.
The causes of the peculiarities of the comparative pathology of the Jews have at different times received different interpretations. Some have attributed the fact that the Jews have a longer duration of life, a lower mortality, etc., and also their greater liability to be affected with nervous diseases than non-Jews, to indolence of the Jew, to his lack of exercise, to the rich, highly-seasoned food that the Jews are supposed to eat. Some have even gone so far as to say that the Jews consume very many sweets, and that on this account they are more liable to diabetes than Christians. That “the Jews are obliged to keep two Sundays in a week, besides Jewish, Christian, and political holidays, or two out of every seven days being lost to business, gives them, by necessity, about twice as many days of leisure as Christians”45 is another argument. But all these reasons do not hold good at present, particularly with our American Jews, as almost everybody who comes in contact with modern Jews will testify.
Others have tried to explain the comparative pathology of the Jews as consisting of “biostatic” differences of the physiological organization of the Jews as compared with non-Jews. But there are no proofs that the Jews possess peculiar racial characteristics of a purely physiological or anatomical nature. The so-called biostatic differences of the Jews can be easily explained by their past history; the differences in customs in relation to the customs of non-Jews; to the devotion of the Jews as husbands, as wives, and as parents—to the family spirit of the Jews, the sentiment de la famille, as M. Legoyt46 calls it, which is more developed in them than in Christians, and which ensures to their children, to their aged and infirm parents, a solicitude more active; to the newborn, the mother’s breast; to the poor and afflicted, a more efficacious assistance. As a result of the pure, chaste, married life which the majority of the Jews lead, we find that alcoholism and syphilis are very rare among them, and, with this, a number of diseases the etiology of which in a great measure depends on these two virulent poisons, as nephritis, arteriosclerosis, tabes, etc. The result is that the Jew has that “unprecedented tenacity of life” which the above statistics have proved.
The custom of ritual circumcision practiced by the Jews on every newborn male infant has been given by many authors47 as a cause for the longevity of the Jews and their comparative immunity to certain diseases. Others have attributed the tenacity of life of the Jews to their excellent system of meat inspection, by which all those animals that are found to be suffering from disease, particularly pulmonary afflictions, are not allowed to be consumed by the Jews. Circumcision has probably a great deal to do with the fact that syphilis is uncommon among the Jews; it has hardly any influence on their susceptibility to gonorrhea, excepting, of course, some of its complications, as balanitis, phimosis, and paraphimosis, which are unknown among Jews. But, excepting syphilis, in the opinion of the writer, circumcision has no influence whatever on the comparative pathology of the Jews. The “Kosher” meat, which the Jews almost invariably eat, may be a factor in the infrequency of tuberculosis among them, but outside of this we do not think that it prolongs their lives.
The past history of the Jew explains to us the reason why he has such a wretched aspect. Persecuted and abused for two thousand years, the Jew of today has comparatively less physical strength and muscular power, his blood is more diluted, his stature smaller, his chest and shoulders narrower, than those of his non-Jewish neighbors. But notwithstanding all these physical infirmities, the Jew resists misfortune, disease, and even death, as we have seen above, better than almost any other race. The reason for this apparent contradiction is not far to seek: the modern Jew is, physically and mentally, a product of natural selection, of a process of survival of the fittest which has been going on for two thousand years.
Being persecuted, oppressed, and tormented for centuries, only those who were the most stubborn, the most callous, the most energetic, could venture to remain Jews. All those who were too weak, sickly, and infirm, bodily and spiritually, were eliminated from the race either by death or baptism. The modern Jews are, therefore, possessed of a great “tenacity of life.”
Another important point in the comparative pathology of the Jews is the fact that they are predisposed, in such a high degree, to the diseases of modern life—to hysteria, neurasthenia, most of the functional neuroses, and diabetes, as we have seen in the course of this paper. The Jew has been for centuries an urban resident, only rarely living in the country and engaged in agricultural pursuits. The diseases of the city population are therefore accentuated on his body and mind. We know that with the majority of the Gentiles the case is different. It has been shown by Mr. Cantlie, in his book Degeneration amongst Londoners, that the London poor do not survive beyond three, or at most four, generations; the same has been proved to be the fate of the poor inhabitants of Paris. It is, indeed, rare to find among the poor in modern large cities families which could trace their ancestors back for five or six generations as city dwellers. The population of the cities is kept up by the constant influx of good, pure, fresh blood from the country, which counteracts the deteriorating influences of the busy, enervating city life.
The Jews have not had this advantage, and all the evil effects of the strained, nerve-shattering city life have consequently been transmitted to their offspring. With each new generation the nervous vitality of the Jewish race has lessened, and, as a result, we find that most of the diseases that increase with the advance of civilization, particularly the neuroses and psychoses, are relatively more frequent among the Jews than non-Jews.
“The Jew,” says Leroy-Beaulieu,48 “is the most nervous, and, in so far, the most modern of men. He is by the very nature of his diseases the forerunner, as it were, of his contemporaries, preceding them on that perilous path upon which society is urged by the excesses of its intellectual and emotional life, and by the increasing spur of competition. The noisy army of psychopaths and neuropaths is gaining so many recruits among us that it will not take the Christians long to catch up with the Jews in this respect. Here, again, there are no ethnic forces in operation.”49
The frequency of diabetes among the Jews is another confirmation of this contention. Diabetes is very much on the increase in all civilized countries, particularly in large cities. Some are even inclined to place it on the list of diseases of modern life. The Jews, as we have just shown, being hard sufferers of most of the diseases of modern life, could, of course, not escape it. The relation of diabetes to lesions of the nervous system has long since been observed, particularly by Claude Bernard.50 The Jews, suffering very much from nervous diseases, are, therefore, to a large extent liable to diabetes.
As has been shown recently by Dickinson,51 the most common variety of diabetes is associated with diseases of the nervous system; pancreatic diabetes is uncommon. “Grief, anxiety, terror, may all be followed by diabetes so closely that there is no room for doubt as to their having occasioned it . . . It is well known as a result of commercial disaster, and it may be said truly that every panic on the stock exchange produces its results in diabetes. It has recently come to light that engine drivers are especially subject to this disease, presumably from the anxious nature of their occupation.” Diabetes is twice as common among engine drivers as in the ordinary population.
According to competent observers in England and America, Dr. Dickinson further points out some cases of insanity are accompanied by diabetes, and, while the pathology of both remains largely a problem for the future, the association between the two conditions seems conclusive to Dickinson. This view of diabetes explains best the reason why the Jews are such great sufferers from this condition: being the most nervous of the European and American races, they show the largest percentage of insanity in their ranks, and they consequently have the largest proportion of diabetics in their midst.
Before we dismiss the subject, we want to state that it has been observed in Europe that the tenacity of life of the Jew and his resistance to certain diseases, as tuberculosis, syphilis, alcoholism, etc., diminish gradually as we proceed from East to West, from the countries where the Jew lives isolated, pursuing his life in his own fashion, adhering to the customs of his forefathers, to those countries where the Jew commingles and assimilates with the non-Jewish inhabitants, adopting their modes of life and habits. This has also been observed to be the case in the United States. Thus Dr. Billings has pointed out that “those (Jewish) mothers who were born in the United States average only 3.56 children each, as against 5.24 for those born in Germany, 5.63 for those born in Russia and Poland, 5.27 for those born in Hungary, and 5.44 for those born in Bohemia, indicating a diminished fertility in those women born in this country.”52
In another place Dr. Billings shows that “the death rate among the Jews in this country is decidedly increasing,” and that “the death rate among the native-born (Jews) of native-born parents was 9.16, and among the foreign-born 7.61.”
It has also been observed by physicians that syphilis and alcoholism are decidedly increasing among those Jews living, for a longer or shorter time, in the United States. If this is actually the case, then we may expect that all those “biostatic” or “ethnic” differences of the American Jews will soon disappear.
SUMMARY
(1) The death rates of the Jews, at all ages, are relatively and absolutely lower than those of the people among whom they live.
(2) The marriage rates and birth rates of the Jews are smaller than those of the Christians; the Jews increase in number more rapidly than non-Jews, because they lose by death relatively fewer children and bring more to maturity.
(3) The Jews die less often than their neighbors from many of the infectious diseases, particularly epidemic cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis.
(4) Syphilis and alcoholism, and also diseases due in great measure to their poisons, are comparatively rare among the Jews.
(5) Diabetes is very frequent among the Jews. Most observers have recorded that almost 25 percent of all the cases of diabetes occur in Jews.
(6) All the functional neuroses and psychoses, particularly neurasthenia and hysteria, occur more frequently among Jews than among non-Jews; while all the organic nervous diseases, as tabes, general paralysis, etc., are less frequent, commensurate with the infrequency of syphilis and alcoholism, among them. The great majority of cases of amaurotic idiocy occur in Jewish children, and insanity is met with among Jews between two and five times more often than among Christians.
(7) Blindness, colorblindness, trachoma, and glaucoma, and also varicose veins—particularly hemorrhoids and hernias—are very frequent among Jews.
(8) All these peculiarities in the comparative pathology of the Jews are not due to any ethnic, “biostatic,” or racial characteristics of a purely anatomical or physiological nature in relation to non-Jews. They have their origin in the past history of the Jews, in their habits of life, and in the fact that syphilis and alcoholism have but rarely been seen among them.
(9) Where the Jew is commingling with his Christian neighbors and adopts their customs and habits of life, he sooner or later loses his “racial characteristics,” and his comparative pathology presents no special peculiarities.
Notes
1. American Jewish Year-book, 1900.
2. C. Lombroso. Der Antisemitismus und die Juden, Leipzig, 1894, p. 95.
3. Mulhall. Dictionary of Statistics, London, 1899, p. 185.
4. G. A. Schimmer. Statistik des Judenthums, Wien, 1873.
5. Lombroso. Loc. cit., p. 94.
6. G. F. Kalb. Handbuch der vergleichende Statistik, Leipzig, 1868, p. 574.
7. Leroy-Beaulieu. Israel among the Nations, New York, 1895, p. 154.
8. John S. Hough. “Longevity and other Biostatic Peculiarities of the Jewish Race.” Medical Record, 1873, pp. 241–244.
9. Census Bulletin No. 19, p. 12.
10. Das Rassenmoment in seinen Einfluss auf Erkrankungen. Caspers Vjsch., 1864, Vol. xxv, pp. 32–45. Quoted from Hough, loc. cit.
11. Virchow’s Jahresbericht, Vol. i, 1869, p. 284.
12. Quoted from Hough, Longevity, etc., loc. cit.
13. Tormay. Lebens und Sterblichkeitsverhältnisse der Stadt, Pest, 1866.
14. 1881, Vol. i, p. 825.
15. Boudin. Géographie médicale, Paris, 1857, Vol. ii, p. 216.
16. Proceedings of the St. Petersburg Medical Society, 1895, p. 206.
17. Bumstead. Venereal Diseases.
18. Joseph Jacobs. “On the Racial Characteristics of Modern Jews,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xv, pp. 23–62.
19. Bordier. Pathologie comparée, Paris, 1889, p. 154.
20. Osler. Practice of Medicine, p. 320.
21. A. Strümpell. Specielle Pathologie u. Therapie, Leipzig, 1885, Vol. ii, p. 240.
22. B. Naunyn. “Der Diabetes Mellitus”; Nothnagel’s Specielle Pathologie u. Therapie, Wien, 1898, p. 124.
23. R. Saundby. Allbutt’s System of Medicine, Vol. iii, p. 197.
24. Heinrich Stern. “The Mortality from Diabetes Mellitus in the City of New York, 1899”; Medical Record, November 17, 1900.
25. Saundby, loc. cit.
26. Journal of the American Medical Association, January 26, 1901.
27. Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, December 3, 1900.
28. Joseph Jacobs. Studies in Jewish Statistics, London, 1891.
29. Raymond. L’etude des maladies des systéme nerveux en Russia, Paris, 1889, p. 71.
30. Otto Binswanger. Die Pathologie u. Therapie d. Neurasthenia, Jena, 1896, p. 46.
31. F. Jolly. Handbuch der practischen Medicin, Ebstein and Schwalbe, Stuttgart, 1900, Vol. iii, p. 755.
32. Von Krafft-Ebing. Nervosität u. neurasthenische Zustände, Wien, 1895, p. 54.
33. J. J. Putnam in Loomis and Thompson’s System of Medicine, Vol. iv, p. 553.
34. Medical Record, March 25, 1899.
35. C. Lombroso. Génie und Irrsinn, Leipzig, 1887, pp. 70–71.
36. H. Oppenheim. Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, Berlin, 1894, p. 636.
37. Charles Féré. La famille neuropathique, Paris, 1894, p. 105.
38. Medical Bulletin, September 16, 1891.
39. Précis d’anthropologie, p. 309, 1887.
40. Real Encyclop. d. gesamt. Heilkunde, Vol. iii, p. 139.
41. Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society, London, 1881.
42. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August, 1889.
43. E. Fuchs. Text-book of Ophthalmology, Second edition, p. 873.
44. Ibid, p. 371.
45. Hough. Loc. cit.
46. [Alfred Legoyt (1815–88) was an eminent French statistician and civil servant.]
47. P. C. Remondino. The History of Circumcision, Philadelphia, 1891. In this book can be found an excellent bibliography on the subject of circumcision.
48. [Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (1842–1912) was a French writer and historian.]
49. Leroy-Beaulieu. Loc. cit., p. 169.
50. [Claude Bernard (1813–78) was a French physiologist, acclaimed as one of the most important medical researchers of the nineteenth century.]
51. “The Baillie Lectures. Considerations Touching the Pathology and Relations on Diabetes.” By W. H. Dickinson. Lancet, February 2, 1901.
52. Census Bulletin No. 19, 1890, p. 9.