"'BOSTON, November 2, 1872. Dear Sir,-- ... First, I have attended four charitable associations; number about forty, fifty, sixty, and one hundred families. At present I only attend one, containing one hundred families, and on which I average a fraction over one visit a day. I have, besides, many private families among the Jews. I have attended but few cases of consumption, and I think the disease is not so prevalent as among Christians.'"
The same report of Dr. Bowditch quotes from Stallard's "London Pauperism Amongst Jews and Christians," as saying that there is no hereditary syphilis, and scarcely any scrofula to augment the mortality in the Jewish families.
In relation to the liability of the Hebrew race to phthisis, Richardson has the following at page 22 of his "Diseases of Modern Life": "The special inroads on vitality made on other races by disease are not easily determined, because of the difficulties arising from temporary admixture of race. I tried once to elicit some facts from a large experience of a particular disease, phthisis pulmonalis, and, as the results of this attempt may be useful, I put them briefly on record.
"At a public institution at which large numbers of persons afflicted with chest diseases applied for medical assistance, and at which I was for many years one of the physicians, I made notes during a short portion of the time of the connection that existed between race and the particular disease I have instanced--phthisis pulmonalis, or pulmonary consumption. The number of persons observed under the disease was three hundred, and no person was put on the record who was not suffering from a malady pure and simple; I mean without complication with any other malady. They who were thus studied were of four classes: (_a_) those who were by race distinctly Saxon; (_b_) those who were of mixed race, or whose race could not be determined; (_c_) those who were distinctly Celtic; (_d_) those who were distinctly Jewish.
"The results were, that of the three hundred patients, one hundred and thirty-three, 44.33 per cent., were Saxon; one hundred and eighteen, 39.33 per cent., were of mixed or undetermined race; thirty-one, 10.33 per cent., were Celtic; and eighteen, 6 per cent., were Jewish."