at would and do attend such
social conditions among those of other races, so in this instance of
good living: the better class of Jews do not suffer in anything near a
like proportion to the better class 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 God, 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 sex 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 circumcision 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
analogous 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;