hem 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 ignoble, 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 circumcision 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 p