June 29, 191 1] 



NATURE 



579 



ness, and dolichocephaly is not observed among the 

 European Jews, but they have other physical traits of 

 their non-Jewish neighbours. 



Prof. F. von Luschan believes that the blond Jews of 

 antiquity may have been the result of intermarriage 

 with the fair "Amorites," but the bulk of the blond- 

 ness, accordinf^ to Fishberg-, must have been acquired 

 later by intermarriage with non-Jews. He also shows 

 that the predominant type of Jewish nose is straight, 

 nearly 60 per cent., the aquiline being only about 14 

 per cent. The character of the nostrils, to which Joseph 

 Jacobs directed attention, is characteristic only of the 

 latter type of nose, which von Luschan says should be 

 termed Armenoid and not Jewish or Semitic. It is very 

 commonly asserted that owing to social and religious 

 causes the Jews have retained their "racial purity." 

 Putting aside the dark Jews of India and Abyssinia, 

 among whom proselytising- has taken place, we read 

 that in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Hungary the Jews 

 owned slaves, and records show that the Church has 

 at various times taken measures to prevent them from 

 converting their Christian slaves to their own faith ; 

 finally, the Church was compelled to forbid them to 

 own slaves altogether. The descendants of white 

 slaves have been fused with the rest of the Jews, and 

 to-day, after several generations of liberty, they can be 

 no longer recognised ; but other causes have contributed 

 to miscegenation. Fishberg supports the statement of 

 Gumplowitcz that "the type or physiognomical char- 

 acter of a folk or social group is not anthropological 

 but social"; he adds, "Mainly for this reason most 

 of the Jews in eastern Europe, who are anthropologic- 

 ally of various types, deceive the casual observer into 

 believing that they all present physiognomical homo- 

 geneity." 



These conclusions, which he believes to be justified, 

 dissipate the exalted notion of the "Chosen People," 

 who claim that they can trace back their ancestry 

 to their patriarch and progenitor Abraham, as well as 

 the pseudo-scientific theory of the Anti-Semites of a 

 "Jewish race," which is entirely alien in Europe, and 

 incapableof assimilating European standards of morals 

 and fair play. From all the historical evidence avail- 

 able, it appears that the Synagogue and the Church 

 are both powerless to prevent intermarriage between 

 Jews and Christians unless the State comes to their 

 rescue. Such marriages are increasingly taking place ; 

 thus there is every indication that the social isolation 

 of the Jew is coming to an end, and that in the near 

 future all the real and alleged differences between 

 Jews and Christians will completely disappear in pro- 

 gressive communities. 



The author gives interesting information concerning 

 the marriage-rate, birth-rate, and infant mortality 

 among the Jews, and their pathological characteristics 

 are discussed at length. There are practically no 

 differences between Jews and Christians as regards 

 the incidence of typhoid fever, scarlet fever, measles, 

 diphtheria, &c. The so-called " tenacity of life " of 

 the Jews is mainly dependent uj^on the great care 

 Jewish mothers take of their children ; they nearly 

 always nurse them at the breast, and Jewesses only 

 rarely go to work in factories after marriage. Their 

 lesser liability to consumption is remarkable, perhaps 

 NO. 2174, VOL. 86] 



because, being better adapted to city life and over- 

 crowding by a long sojourn in the Ghetto, and by a 

 process of natural selection, there were eliminated 

 most of those who were predisposed to tuberculosis. 

 The only pathological processes which are more fre- 

 quent among Jews are the derangements of the 

 nervous system. 



"The Jew is the most nervous, and, in so far, the 

 most modern of men. He is by the very nature of 

 his diseases the forerunner, as it were, of his contem- 

 poraries, preceding them on that perilous path upon 

 which society is urged by the excesses of its intel- 

 lectual and emotional life, and by the increasing spur 

 of competition." 



Many other aspects of Jewish life are dealt with in 

 this interesting and valuable study, such as the social, 

 economic, and political conditions of the Jews. With 

 regard to their future as a people — for we are no longer 

 justified in speaking of a Jewish race — the author 

 evidently subscribes to Ruppin's statement that "ortho- 

 doxy and poverty, assimilation and prosperity, are 

 almost synonymous terms with the Jews." 



A. C. Haddon. 



ALCOHOLIC FERMENTATION. 

 Alcoholic Fermentation. By Dr. A. Harden, F.R.S. 

 Pp. ix-l-128. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 

 191 1.) Price 4^. net. 



THE appearance of Dr. Harden 's "Alcoholic Fer- 

 mentation " will be warmly welcomed by those 

 engaged in studying problems connected with yeast 

 and the production of alcohol. Dr. Harden 's own 

 contributions to the question of alcoholic fermentation 

 are so well known that one expects and finds in this 

 small volume a good up-to-date general survey of the 

 subject. The material is divided up into eight chap- 

 ters, of which the first is devoted to historical intro- 

 duction, whilst the next four deal with the proper- 

 ties of zymase and the theories which have been de- 

 veloped since Buchner's fundamental discovery of the 

 dependence of fermentation on enzymes rather than 

 on necessarily living organisms. 



In dealing with the accelerating effects of phos- 

 phates, arsenates, and arsenites on the course of fer- 

 mentation. Dr. Harden compares the ideas of von 

 Lebedew and Iwanoff with his own conception of the 

 constitution and function of the "hexosephosphate," 

 which he formulates as the salt of a hexose-diphos- 

 phoric acid, whilst Iwanoff regards the substance as 

 a triose-phosphoric acid, C,H,02(PO,H3). Perhaps 

 the strongest evidence in favour of the hexose-diphos- 

 phoric acid formula is afforded by the observation of 

 Harden and Young, that when hydrolysed, fructose, 

 as well as phosphoric acid is produced. The signifi- 

 cance of the phosphate derivatives is such that one 

 must welcome the synthetic production of phosphoric 

 ester-acids of sugars and allied com|X)unds now being 

 effected by Contardi and Neuberg. 



Some interest attaches to Neuberg and Pollak's 

 synthesis of salts of monophosphoric acids of sucrose 

 and glucose, as they have been isolated in analysable 

 condition, and, though not of glucoside type, need to 

 be hydrolysed before undergoing fermentation with 

 yeast. In the case of the hexose-phosphate of alco- 



