buted to housing or incipient
civilization, as it is attributed to housing among the Chippeways,
Sioux, or Mandans in the regions that formerly formed the Northwest
Territory. The question is very plainly answered as to how consumption
was introduced or whence it sprung that has so ravaged the Oceanic
Islands. The sailors who first visited those islands were not, as a
rule, a batch of consumptive tourists on a voyage in search of health or
recreation; but we can well understand that the proverbially improvident
mariner has not always had his health looked after by an Anson or a
Cook, and that many a festive tar who induced the unsophisticated Indian
maid to join him in worship at the shrine of Venus Porcina carried in
the innermost recesses of the folds of his pendulous and sea-beaten
prepuce the remnants of former Bacchanalian festivities performed in the
questionable temples of Venus and Bacchus in Portsmouth or London.
Consumption, as such, was neither imported nor propagated by Europeans
into those islands, its original entry being in the shape of syphilis.
Had it been the ancient mariners of old Phoenicia in the days of its
circumcision, or the circumcised marines of the ancient Atlantean fleets
from the sunken continent of Plato, instead of the uncircumcised
sailors of modern England, that first and since visited those islands,
it is safe to say that consumption would not now exist there. From this,
it may be well to inquire what would be the relation between the Jewish
race and consumption; were circumcision among them to be done away with,
would it not be greatly on the increase?

The weight of testimony is evidently convincing that the Jew has a
greater longevity and stronger resistance to disease, as well as a less
liability to physical ills, than other races; that all these exemptions
or benefits are not altogether due to social customs is evident; how
much circumcision may have to do in inducing these favorable conditions
can be better appreciated by a consideration of how circumcision affects
those of other races, and more particularly how its performance works
changes in the individual in his general health and condition, and in
doing away with many physical ailments that the individual was
previously subjected to. So that the Jew cannot be said to be a loser by
his observance of this rite, and he and his race have been well repaid
for all the sufferings and persecutions that its observance has
subjected t