!74 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Bosnia, Gliick * again refers to it as characteristic. Granted, with 

 Weissenberg,f that it is an acquired characteristic, the effect of 

 long-continued subjection to unfavorable sanitary and social en- 

 vironment, it has none the less become a hereditary trait; for not 

 even the perhaps relatively recent prosperity of Jacobs's West End 

 Jews has sufficed to bring them up to the level of their English 

 brethren in capacity of the lungs. 



At this point a surprising fact confronts us. Despite the appear- 

 ances of physical degeneracy which we have noted, the Jew betrays 

 an absolutely unprecedented tenacity of life. It far exceeds, espe- 

 cially in the United States, that of any other known people.^: This 

 we may illustrate by the following example: Suppose two groups 

 of one hundred infants each, one Jewish, one of average American 

 parentage (Massachusetts), to be born on the same day. In spite of 

 all the disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter, the 

 chances, determined by statistical means, are that one half of the 

 Americans will die within forty-seven years; while the first half 

 of the Jews will not succumb to disease or accident before the ex- 

 piration of seventy-one years. The death rate is really but little 

 over half that of the average American population. This holds good 

 in infancy as in middle age. Lombroso has put it in another way. 

 Of one thousand Jews born, two hundred and seventeen die before 

 the age of seven years; while four hundred and fifty-three Christians 

 — more than twice as many — are likely to die within the same 

 period. This remarkable tenacity of life is well illustrated by the 

 following table from a most suggestive article by Hoffmann.* We 

 can not forbear from reproducing it in this place. 



Death Raf(S per 1,000 Population in the Seventh, Tenth, and Thirt<cnlh Wards of New 



York City, 1890, by Place of Birth. 



From this table it appears, despite the extreme poverty of 

 the Russian and Polish Jews in the most densely crowded portions 



* 1896, p. 591. f 1895, p. 374. 



J On Jewish demography, consult the special appendix in Lombroso, 1874; Andieo, 

 1881, p. 70; Jacobs, 1891, p. 49. Dr. Billings, in Eleventh United States Census, 1890, 

 Bulletin No. 19, gives data for our country. On pathology, see Buschan, 1895. 



* The Jew as a Life Risk. The Spectator (an actuarial journal) 1895, pp. 222-224, 

 and 233, 234). Lagneau, 1861, p. 411, speaks of a viability in Algeria even lower than, 

 that of the natives. 



