138 PART II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



herring to a typhoid patient. On the latter dying, he made a 

 further entry: "Herring cures typhoid in England, but not in 

 France." 1 



58. To consider a more important problem. Some one 

 does not sleep well, and desires to ascertain the cause. Does 

 he sleep perhaps too much or too little? Is he too warm or 

 too cold in bed? Are the bed-clothes too heavy? Is there 

 insufficient or too much fresh air in the room ? Does he breathe 

 under the bed-clothes? Does he eat or drink too much or too 

 little, or too late, or not late enough at night? Do the meat, 

 the vegetables, the cheese, the bread, the milk, the coffee, or 

 the condiments, disagree with him? Has he insufficient or too 

 much open-air exercise? Is he over- or under-worked, or has 

 he anxieties, or is he consumed by ennui? Is his health im- 

 paired? Etc., etc. Pity the man who will trust solely to ex- 

 periment in such a circumstance, or rush to a conclusion ! Yet 

 if he will consult his medical adviser, he will probably obtain 

 a satisfactory reply in a few minutes, for such is the power of 

 science, even an imperfect science like medicine. However, his 

 many questions are themselves reflections of scientific concep- 

 tions which the truly "plain man" is without. Not always have 

 we mince pies to aid us in arriving at a conclusion. 



Or let us submit a problem dealt with by Dr. Fishberg, a 

 model investigator the stature of the Jews. Comparing the 

 average height of the Jews with the average height of the 

 contemporaneous population of Europe, we find that the Jews 

 are short of stature. Yet the problem is not so simple. Were 

 the ancestors of the Jews short? Should we not allow for the 

 fact that the conscripts measured had not grown to full stature ? 

 Since the Jews are mostly town-dwellers, may this not account 

 for the shortness ? May not their indoor occupation of a seden- 

 tary character, stunt them ? And are not the poverty and pri- 

 vation which exist among so considerable a percentage of the 

 Jews conducive to short stature? Since Jews do not dwell in 

 large numbers in countries where the stature of man is rela- 

 tively high, is it not feasible that in a general estimate they 

 should appear nearer the bottom of the scale ? Ought we not 

 to remember that Jews of different countries vary in height 

 relatively to the general population of those countries? And 

 does not consumption preferably attack the taller Jews, and 

 therefore tend to shorten average stature? 



In the same cautious spirit, Dr. Fishberg investigates various 

 other alleged physical and mental characteristics of the Jews, 



1 The illustrations which Macaulay supplies appear to show that he was 

 in need of Bacon's Canons. Because some boys learn that a cloudy day is 

 the best for trout catching, it does not follow that all boys learn it, nor that 

 schoolboys do not transgress countless times against Bacon's rules. Macaulay's 

 reasoning here is a fair example of precipitate inference, which respect for 

 Bacon's methods would have obviated. 



