one of their females to
have to resort to a life of prostitution to save herself or her children
from starvation, as, unfortunately, is too often the case in Christian
communities, where religion is put on and off with Sunday clothes. The
temperance and sobriety, as well as the economy and industry of the
father, are not without a good moral as well as a hereditary effect on
the daughters, who are neither rendered brutal nor demoralized through
the example and instigation of drunken fathers. They have, therefore, a
better average homelife, to which they cling and which protects them.
The aid and benevolent associations of the Jews are among the most
efficacious of charitable institutions, and no class gives more freely
or generously for this purpose. The Home for Aged Hebrews in New York is
an example of the character with which they dispense charity. We need
not, therefore, be surprised to find, in statistics of illegitimacy by
religious denominations taken in Prussia, that the Jewish women are
three times as chaste as the Catholics and more than four times as
chaste as the Evangelists.[78] The Jew has, therefore, two avenues of
infection from syphilis cut off,--the lesser liability due to his
circumcision and the chastity of the women.

Richardson mentions the immunity of the Jewish race from tubercular
disease, and notices the well-known relation existing between a
syphilitic taint and a phthisical tendency. The comparative statistics
offered by the Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians in regard to deaths
from consumption have already been mentioned in a former chapter, they
being as four Christians to one Jew, while the Mohammedan, from his
greater abstemiousness and temperance to assist him, shows a still lower
percentage than the Jew. There can be but little doubt that to this
particular and well-marked less syphilization the Hebrew race owes much
of its exemption from many other diseases and its greater resistance to
ordinary ailments and epidemic diseases.

The relative less frequency of syphilis among all circumcised people is
noticed by Dr. Bernheim, in his brochure "De la Circoncision," he being
the surgeon of the Israelitish Consistory of Paris. His utterances on
this subject are worthy of attention, he having not only paid particular
attention to this, but having had unusual opportunities for the basis of
his opinions. Dr. Bernheim looks upon coition as a frequent source of
tubercular infection, and the sensi