The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1876-05-18
HEBREW VITALITY.
A Race of Robust Health and Remark
ably Long Life.

A Race OF hODuSC dealtU anu heulaTk-
ably Long Life.
The Jews are the healthiest and the
longest-lived people on the face of the
earth. Their immunity from diseases of
all forms is remarkable. Even the great
est epidemics pass them by with the in
Fiction of much lighter scourge than falls
upon other races. 1t is declared that the
cholera never chose one of them for its
victim, and, in fact, the deaths from this
malady have been so few as almost to
bear out the assertion. Suicide is sell
dom practiced among them. 1t has been
computed, from statistics returned in GER
tain provinces of Austria and Germany,
that in a population of !, 10000 the pro-
portion of suicides between.the Jews and
the mixed white races was one to four.
From data carefully studied Hof-
man found that between the years 1928
and 1910 the number of still.born among
the Jews of Germany was US one in thir-
ty-nine, and among other races as one in
forty. Mayer ascertained that in Furth
the proportion of Jewish children who
die between the ages of one and five
years is ten per cent, and of Christian
children of the same age it is fourteen
per cent. M. Neuville, calculating from
the statistics of Frankfort, shows even a
greater vitality existing among the chill
dren of the Jews. He also finds from
his data that the average duration of the
life of the Jew is forty-eight years and
nine months, while of the Christian it is
thirty-six years and eleven months. Gin
the total of all ages half of the Jews born
reach the age of fifty-three years and one
month, while half of the Christians born
attain the age of thirty-six years only"
One fourth of the Jewish population live
beyond seventy -one years, but the same
proportion of the Christian population
live only beyond fifty.nine years and ten
months. The official returns of Prussia
give to the Jews mortality of 1.62 per
cent. While the Jews double their num-
bers in Al! years others require period
of fifty-one years.
In 1S49 there was in Prussia one death
for every forty Jews and one death for
every thirty-two of the remaining popu-
lation.
Commenting upon these statistics,
which are brought together by DR.. Rich
ardson in Diseases of Modern Life" that
author ascribes the vitality of the Jews
to their sober way of living. "Tbe Jew
drinks less than his even Christian he
takes, as rule, better food; he marries
earlier; he rears the children he has
brought into this world with greater per-
sonal care; he tends to the aged more
thoughtfully; he takes better care of his
poor, and he takes better care of himself.
| he does not boast of tomorrow, but he
provides for it, and he holds tenaciously
to all he gets. To our Saxon eyes and
Celtic eyes he carries these virtues too
far; but thereby he wins, becomes pow
erful, and, scorning boisterous mirth and
passion, is comparatively happy"
It is fact in the history of the Jewish
race that they nowhere have paid es-
pecial attention to the development of
physical capacity. They do not from
choice enter a military life, they establish
no public games, are not given to athlet-
ic exercises and pursue no definite means
for attaining great corporal strength and
stature. AS a people they do not reach
| high physical standard, and still their
| vitality is greater than that of any other
civilized race. In applying these facts
to the question of the effects of severe
physical exercise, DR.. Richardson re-
marks -
"It would be impossible, and in truth
unnecessary to enforce any stronger ar
gument as to the negative value of ex-
cessive physical exertion in sustaining
the vital power of a race. In the course
of centuries the most powerful nations
have died out and empires of perfect
physical beauty and chivalric fame have
passed away. But, through all these
vicissitudes, one race, cultivating none
of the so.called athletic and heroic quail
ities,, and following none of the exercises
popularized as 'bracing,' hardy 'invig-
orating,' has held its irrepressible own,
to remain more numerous people, in
its totality, than ever; people still pre-
senting more tenacious life than its
neighbors, and showing, as it is relieved
of the cruel restraint long forced on it,
the continuance also of mental force and
of commanding genius in art, in letters,
in politics, in commerce and in science"
1t may be truthfully added in the con-
nection, too, that the Isrealites infict no
tax upon the people for the care of pau
pers. They care for their own.