on is, in the opinion of the writer, the
real cause of the differences in longevity and faculty for the enjoyment
of life that the Hebrew enjoys in contrast to his Christian brother.
Christian and uncircumcised races may individually, or in classes,
develop some peculiar immunity or exemption, as, for instance, the
tolerance to arsenic exhibited by some German mountaineers, or the
peculiar safety enjoyed by the butcher class from attacks of continued
fever;[74] but these exemptions are purchased at the expense of the
future, the effects of arsenic, long continued, finally having its
morbid effects, and the very plethora which is the bulwark of resistance
in the butcher, this plethora being in the end a treacherous foe,
diseases result from it which make a sudden ending to this class when it
is least expected.

For an all around long-liver the Hebrew holds a pre-eminence, and, as
the factor in this pre-eminence, circumcision has no counter-claimant.
Circumcision is like a substantial and well-secured life-annuity; every
year of life you draw the benefit, and it has not any drawbacks or
after-claps. Parents cannot make a better paying investment for their
little boys, as it insures them better health, greater capacity for
labor, longer life, less nervousness, sickness, loss of time, and less
doctor-bills, as well as it increases their chances for an euthanasian
death.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PREPUCE, SYPHILIS, AND PHTHISIS.

It is not alone the tight-constricted, glans-deforming,
onanism-producing, cancer-generating prepuce that is the particular
variety of prepuce that is at the bottom of the ills and ailments, local
or constitutional, that may affect man through its presence. The loose,
pendulous prepuce, or even the prepuce in the evolutionary stage of
disappearance, that only loosely covers one-half of the glans, is as
dangerous as his long and constricted counterpart. If we look over the
world's history, since in the latter years of the fifteenth century
syphilis came down like a plague, walking with democratic tread through
all walks and stations in life, laying out alike royalty or the vagrant,
the curled-haired and slashed-doubleted knight, or the tonsured monk, we
must conclude that syphilis has caused more families to become extinct
than any ordinary plague, black death, or cholera epidemic. Without
wishing to enter into a history of syphilis, it is not outside of the
province of this book to allude to i