“Beiträge zur jüdischen Rassenfrage,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 6, no. 3 (1910): 40–44.
Felix Theilhaber (1884–1956) was a German Jewish physician, sexologist, racial scientist, and Zionist activist. He was born in Bamberg, Germany, and raised in Munich. He published works on health and medicine, sexual politics and social reform, and Jewish politics. In 1911 he published his best-known work, Der Untergang der deutschen Juden (The decline of German Jewry), in which he employed statistical evidence to prove that German Jewry would eventually disappear unless Jews embraced Jewish nationalism and reversed the process of assimilation. The work generated a great deal of public attention and controversy. See John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 142–45; and Mitchell B. Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 84–87.
The question as to whether the Jews constitute a distinct race is so interesting that researchers are continually inquiring into it. In some Jewish circles the question has been quickly solved, according to the subjective position of a given Jewish individual to the Jewish Question. Not so in science. Here the controversy still rages. Therefore the following research results dealing with the Jewish race question, results that heretofore have not been dealt with, should be of interest. First, however, allow me to set forth a few general remarks.
The Jewish race cannot be proven to be distinct or particular by referring to the fact that Jews suffer in smaller numbers statistically from certain known infectious—that is, communicable—diseases. We know that the Jews often suffer less from infectious illness because of their different social conditions and their better hygienic habits (where the religious laws are no longer a factor, a higher material standard of living often accounts for this). These circumstances are in no way conditioned by racial disposition. At most, one might ask whether their race offers a specific protection when they are exposed to infection under external living conditions analogous or similar [to those of non-Jews].
Here, for instance, it would be both interesting and important to undertake a scientific inquiry into whether those Germans settled in Palestine actually suffer from malaria to a greater degree and whether, as is claimed, they tend toward sterility, while such phenomena are encountered to a far smaller degree in those Jews recently settled there. Although those Russian farmers who converted to Judaism, the Gerim, and those who have settled at Jemma in the Galilee, were so afflicted with malaria that they were forced to abandon their small portion of land, Jews are now settled in that same area.53
However, here as well, we are not necessarily dealing with some specific traits of the Jewish race that have been guarded over the centuries. As Dr. L. Sofer54 has set forth elsewhere, a selection process had occurred earlier in those areas where malaria raged, producing a formidable antidote against the disease. Those elements highly susceptible to malaria died out. Today’s Jews would thus be the descendants of those settlers who came to terms with malaria. Their grandchildren therefore can nowadays overcome this illness more easily than do the Nordic immigrants.
One can see how interesting the question is, but we have neglected one point. Might there not be something else? The Gerim were drinkers of hard liquor who, as is sometimes said, somewhat weakened their cells through alcohol and poisoned themselves, thus making themselves abnormally weak and susceptible to malaria. How are the Germans presently settled in Palestine faring?
Infectious diseases are largely the product of purely external conditions, so that the search for racial characteristics can only consider them last of all.
Rather, we must explore the realms of hereditary and congenital illnesses. According to what von Lubarsch has recently set forth in what can now be virtually considered a classic study,55 something inherited can only be what was already apparent in the individual lives of the ancestors; a disposition to disease, then, can only be designated as heritable when it is already present within one’s ancestral line. “If, however, a deterioration of the germ plasm of the ancestors, emerging as a consequence of an arbitrary illness or the introduction of poisons, creates a new disposition to disease within the germ cells of the descendants, then this obviously cannot be considered as a hereditary process, but rather as a trait acquired by the poisoning of germ cells.” So, for instance, what originally was social or religious-hygienic practice could very well cause acquired traits to become part of the racial disposition. A specific engram is being generated in the germ cells of many ancestors and primal ancestors, which, in the descendant, causes a hereditary predisposition, for instance, toward a certain illness. The essence of heredity resides, then, in the complete absorption of the acquired traits, without the possibility to lose them in the following generations, through special processes (for example, according to Mendelian laws).
If we thus apparently have to differentiate carefully between acquired and inherited traits, we shall have to stick to the scheme [for doing that] offered to us by the new research in this area. I should begin by saying that these works will certainly not be the last word on the subject; their categories finally allow us, however, a positive undergirding for our research. Two books are of relevance here: Ebstein, Vererbare zelluläre Stoffwechselkrankheiten,56 and Fr. Martius, Das pathologische Vererbungsproblem.57
Investigations into the Jews, which until now have been exclusively focused on head shape and hair and eye color, are now finally supposed to take other questions into consideration.
Martius offers the following categorization:
(1) Innate anatomical positive variations, conditional on the appearance of additional determinants.
An example: Polydactylism (six toes, the formation of surplus fingers, and so on).
(2) Innate anatomical negative variations, produced by the lack of certain physiological determinants.
An example: colorblindness.
(3) Racially aberrant traits.
An example: hemophilia (the so-called bleeder sickness).
(4) Inheritances that as aberrations or deviations first appear after birth [literally, post-uterine]; these often have the tendency to emerge during certain phases of development. Examples include chlorosis (paleness), myopia (shortsightedness), and osteosclerosis.
(5) Inherited tissue and organ weaknesses, of a kind that result in a negative life force (Lebensenergie) and weaken one’s resistance to external or environmental threats.
Examples: spastic spinal paralysis (convulsive spinal cord paralysis),58 muscular dystrophy (progressive muscle degeneration), constitutional albuminuria [albumin in the urine].
The last two groups must naturally evince their heritability—that is, must appear as weaknesses in entire families or sexes. Otherwise, it could be easily disputed that these are “inherited” faults.
Qualitative research on the Jews regarding these questions is almost entirely lacking. We still lack up-to-date work on mental illnesses of the Jews, on diseases of the blood, inheritance of albuminia, and hypophalangism among Jews. There remains as well a need to investigate the predisposition of Jews in individual countries to multiple births and so forth.
In what follows I seek to touch on a number of the issues briefly. Some individual results can be found in studies already published.59
Among Jewish women, menstruation occurs earlier than among women in the general population. [Samuel] Weissenberg60 has published, independently from my own research, similar results and found what I have confirmed in the German case—that Jewish women in Russia menstruate earlier than do Christian women. My investigations reveal that women in the German rural population begin to menstruate at age sixteen; the urban population, depending on level of prosperity, at fourteen to fifteen years of age. Jewish women, however, both rural and urban dwellers, begin to menstruate at twelve and a half to fourteen years of age.
It would be important to verify this phenomenon in other places, since menstruation—as we shall later see—is an event not insignificant for the health of an individual.
However, it is not only that the onset of menstruation (what is called menarche) is too early, but also that its cessation [menopause] occurs later. Jewish women in Germany experience menopause (the end of menstruation) on average later than do women of the same social standing, or average German women overall.
And something else is of interest here. The beginning of menstruation is hereditary. According to our surveys, which we naturally had to conduct in the most discrete fashion, we have ascertained that mothers and daughters began to menstruate at precisely the same point in their lives. We can thus speak of particular menstrual conditions of Jewish women that, on the basis of our discussions and investigations, we can claim to be hereditary traits.
Statistics from Hofrat61 A. Theilhaber’s clinic yield further results. Myome (benign growths in the uterus) affected 40 percent of the Jewish women, while cancer of the cervix was discovered in only 0.75 percent of Jewish women examined. We repeatedly sought to explain such statistics by reference to external factors. We did not succeed. Jewish women who become ill with cancer surely do not die without having consulted a physician. Should we imagine that only those women with benign tumors visited the clinic, while others with malignant tumors were treated by other physicians?
We have examined the death registers of the Jewish communities. H. Kirschner kindly allowed me to extract the following material from an as yet unpublished work.
In Munich, 185 Jews died of cancer between 1876 and 1908. Of these, 98 were women. Of these, 6 suffered from uterine cancer. (One case proved to be a false identification.)
In Nuremberg over the past decade, 77 deaths from cancer were recorded, only one from uterine cancer.62
[. . .]
I owe these statistics to the official statistical yearbooks of the city of Budapest.63
[. . .]
Although uterine cancer commonly makes up approximately 35 percent of the cases of cancer among women, and almost never falls below 25 percent, one finds that among Jewish women the figure is 10 percent at the highest. Cancer of the cervix, which is so common among women in the general population, is rarely encountered in Jewish women.
This striking phenomenon, which was first discovered and publicized by A. Theilhaber and which has aroused great interest in cancer research circles, has recently been repeatedly confirmed—admittedly, chiefly through private means alone for now. It would be important, however, to secure evidence from wider Jewish circles.
The questions for science resulting from these facts cannot be addressed here. It ought only to be briefly mentioned that the development of cancer is connected with localized inadequate blood supply, and that Jewish women have always had particularly stronger blood circulation in the genitals, as do all those who stem from southern tribes or nations (Völkerstämme).
Another type of illness, which on the contrary Jews do seem to be frequently afflicted by, is peripheral vascular disease (presenile gangrene caused by arteritis obliterans) [Buerger’s disease].
This disorder is characterized by convulsive pains in the foot or in the calves that develop after a time while walking, and that induce limping, or alternatively force one to stand still; for years [symptoms] consist of a frozen sensation in and a paleness of the foot; a coolness, and sometimes a loss of sensation in the affected limb; and a tendency to suppurating inflammation. Young men are especially affected, women more rarely.
Schümann, especially, has earned recognition for his research into this disease.64
“In the case of this disease, heredity is not without influence” (Schümann). Weiss and Sternberg have each treated, among others, two siblings suffering from this seldom-seen illness.
The oldest of recorded cases concerns a Jew (Burow). Erb published (in 1904) forty-five cases, of which fourteen concerned Jews. Borchard, Michels, and Weber have published similar statistical results. Idelsohn65 identifies twelve Jews among his twenty-four cases, and Higiers, in his research in Warsaw, identifies twenty-two Jews out of the twenty-three individuals in total.
The cause of this disease still awaits explanation. Given the fact, however, that so many Jews are affected, and that external dangers or damaging forces such as the influence of syphilis, alcohol, or nicotine must be discounted as negligible, one can conclude that we are dealing here mainly with a constitutional malady.
Thus, the question regarding a Jewish racial disposition opens up a vast field of inquiry. This question ought not to be solved or clarified in some one-sided way. The fact is that cervical cancer, which is the most common form of cancer among women and yet the least common found among Jews, has provided quite an important foundation for cancer research. Hence, the study of Jewish traits that are inherited or acquired is a question of general scientific implications, and we hope that an understanding of this point might finally break through to wider circles.
What has been achieved until now in the realm of knowledge about Jewish diseases is insufficient and, for the most part, out of date; moreover, it is false to imagine that head measurements and other related sorts of anthropological investigations can completely illuminate questions of race. Whether the Jews represent today a singular entity [racially] in some sense will not be determined as much by anthropology as by pathology or, as we might also put it, nosology—knowledge of diseases. We must finally commit ourselves to the effective paths [of investigation] delineated here, and if I were to suggest a motto, it would not be “let us free ourselves from anthropology,” which has up until now been predominant. Rather, I should merely like to call for the founding of another scientific discipline that I would like to designate Jewish pathology.
53. Felix Theilhaber, “Die Gerim,” Die Welt, 1907.
54. Dr. L. Sofer, Zeitschrift Palästina, vol. 4, no. 2, 1910. [For information about Leo Sofer, see the headnote for selection 28.]
55. Jahreskurse für ärztliche Fortbildung, vol. 1, no. 5, 15. [Otto von Lubarsch (1860–1933) was a renowned German pathologist and professor of medicine.]
56. Published by F. Enke, Stuttgart, 1907.
57. F. Deuticke, Leipzig, 1909.
58. Translations into lay terms have been done following Schreiber, Med. Taschenwörterbuch, 1900.
59. Hofrat Dr. A. Theilhaber, Münch. Mediz. Woschenschrift, 1909, no. 25; Zeitschrift f. Krebsforschung, 1910; Dr. Felix Theilhaber, Zeitschrift f. Krebsforschung, 1910.
60. Centralblatt für Geburtshilfe und Gynäk[ologie].
61. [Adolf Theilhaber, Felix’s father, was a well-known researcher specializing in gynecology. Hofrat was an official honorary title in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.]
62. [There follows a table giving comparative statistics for Budapest from 1902 to 1906, on overall deaths and deaths from cancer of Jews and the general population.]
63. [There follows another table for the same years, giving comparative statistics on uterine cancer deaths.]
64. Münch. Med. Wochenschrift, 1909, no. 39.
65. “Zur Kasuistik und Aetiologie der intermit. Hinkens,” Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde, vol. 24, p. 285.