Strict Observing Jew Does Not So Easily or So Often Fall Victim to Disease Lord Noynihan President O

Of one thing my experience has assured me that the strict observing Jew does not so easily, or so often, fall a victim to disease, Lord Moynihan, the famous surgeon, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, declared last night, speaking at a gathering held on behalf of the Jewish Health Organisation at the home of Mr. Henry van den Bergh. Mr. Donald van den Bergh was in the chair, and addresses were also delivered by the Haham Dr. Gaster, Dr. Redcliffe Salaman, the well known anthropologist, who is President of the Jewish Health Organisation, Dr. Nabarro, the anthority on sleeping sickness and bacteriolog, Dr. Eichholz, former Chief Medical Inspector of the Board of Education, Mr. A. H. Levy, the well known occulist, who is Chairman of the Jewish Health Organisation, and others.

Jewry is under going subtle changes, on which it is almost an intrusion, even for one who admires your race and has warm affection for many among you to speak frankly, Lord Noynihan went on. Jewry in ages past founded its life upon religion. To a greater extent than happens with any of the people among whom your lives are now cast, you have been guided, inspired, supported and solaced by your religion, which has been your leader and unfailing comfort. Were I a Jew there is surely nothing of which I should be prouder.

Yet evidence is not lacking, Lord Moynihan continued, that, whatever may be happening within the individual heart, your old religious observances and the old habits of life seem to the observer to have a weakening influence upon you. Are you being unduly affected by the conditions among which you live, losing more of the great things of life, because perhaps you have more to lose than your neighbours? To what extent are modern conditions in your human and material surroundings, the “racial poisons” from which even in my young days you were almost exempt, the mental disturbances, the diseases of degeneracy, and the crime, which to some indicate the general deterioration of the white races, affecting you? What resistance as a race, and individually are you offering? To what extent are the old safeguards, religious, moral, social at work?

The most conspicuous racial change, he said, is surely this: that from being a pastoral people you have become an urban people. And that is not the worst. Many of your people live in the worst of slums in our large cities: in our relatively sunless land they enjoy less than their share of sunshine: their food good of its kind perhaps, is meagre: their occupations not subjected to the stern supervision exercised over many trades by State or Municipality. If improvement is to follow upon well-directed activities an immense amount of careful enquiry by a competent authority is needed. From what diseases do your urban population suffer? How does the incidence among these compare with the incidence among those who are not Jews? Are the religious, moral or dietetic habits of your people undergoing change, and if so is the change in any degree for the better? When you can answer these questions you will have proved the problem you have to solve.

NO ONE CAN TRUTHFULLY DENY THAT JEW HAS ADDED MUCH TO NATIONAL LIFE AROUND HIM IN SCIENCE ART MUSIC AND MEDICINE STATESMANSHIP PHILOSOPHY AND GENERAL CULTURE LORD MOYNIHAN SAYS: WHAT HAS BEEN EFFECT UPON JEWISH RACE SPIRITUALLY AND PHYSICALLY: OF INDEBTEDNESS TO MEDICINE TO JEWRY I HAVE OFTEN SPOKEN: JEWISH RACE HAS GIVEN IMMENSE AND PERMANENT ENRICHMENT TO MEDICAL SCIENCE

But enquiry and wise counsel must precede action, Lord Moynihan continued. Certain diseases among you appear definitely to be on the increase. Defects of vision are more frequent with you. Human tuberculosis is not rare with you. Dental disease is far too common. Your enquiries will, I believe, reveal a truth of which I am well assured. The new social conditions of populous cities, of limited air space and so forth bear more heavily upon children than adults. Diseases which call for remedy and relief in the grown man and woman begin during childhood. In large measure they are preventible. You will therefore find it necessary to increase as far as is possible your accommodation for the investigation and treatment of young children. Constant medical supervision will then ensure a more virile and vigorous adult age.

To-night, Lord Moynihan said, we celebrate the Jewish Health Movement, whose purpose is to study scientifically the morbid changes brought about in people of your race by the modern conditions under which you are compelled to live. The movement takes its place with those other activities which testify to your cultural and political aspirations, to your desire to hold fast to your immemorial and most honourable traditions, while advancing your welfare by recognition and appropriate adaptation of all modern knowledge. You are, if I may be permitted to say so, singularly well qualified for your task; for you have the material, the opportunity, and the trained enquirers; and no other people are equally competent or equally equipped for the necessary research.

No one can truthfully deny, Lord Moynihan proceeded, that the Jew has added much to the national life around him, in science, in art, music and medicine; in statesmanship, philosophy and general culture. What has been the effect upon his race spiritually and physically? His task has been to preserve almost intact, and certainly unsullied, the great heritage of the past, and wherever possible to combine them with, or adapt them to, the new revolutionary changes in science.

I am very happy to be here to-night as your guest on an occasion which allows me to pay tribute to my sincere and enlightening friendship with many Jews, Lord Moynihan said. Of the indebtedness of medicine to Jewry I have often spoken. Though your race started late, it has made amends. The roll of honour at Salerno in the 11th. and 12th. centuries contains many Jewish names. Isaac Judeus bore the proud title “Monarcha Medicorum”. Rabbi Ibn Ezra inspired a noble poem by Browning; the greatest of all Moses Maimonides, poet, philosopher, physician, is the author of a prayer that may be worthily set by the side of the oath of Hippocrates. In recent days the names of Henle, Traube, Henoch, Colnheim, Bardeleben, Wasserman, and above all of Haffkine and Ehrlich, show the immensity and permanent value of the enrichment of our science by works of your race.

I say you made a late start, he continued. For the Jew is of the Orient, not of the Occident; not only in respect of his recial ancestry, but in many qualities, both intellectual and spiritual; he is distinguished, as are others of the Orient by a zeal for righteousness.

In his own country, of hills and broad, wind-cleansed valleys, he was of pastoral stock, lived an open life, free from animal attack, or from diseases brought about by environment. He oreated and steadily fostered the belief that disease was evil, that it was due, not so much to external assault, as to internal decay, a lapse from personal righteousness, a punishment for his personal unwor thiness and lock of virtue.

JEWS HAVE BEEN HARD-WORKING GOD-FEARING UPRIGHT PEOPLE MAKING GOOD CITIZENS BECAUSE OF THEIR LOYALTY INDUSTRY FRUGALITY AND DUE RECOGNITION OF RIGHTFUL AUTHORITY: THIS CONDITION EXISTED FOR CENTURIES UNCHANGED: IN LAST CENTURY GREATER CHANGES HAVE TAKEN PLACE THAN IN PRECEDING FIFTY GENERATIONS

It was a noble belief, with far more of truth in it than many suppose. Disease was therefore something to be relieved or cured by submission or sacrifice, or by return to purity, by contrition and meditation; through propition and atonement. A man afflicted by disease must mend his ways of life, and seek help from God. “To seek the Physician was to depart from God” was said in the time of Asa, King of Judah.

This racial opinion, prejudice if you like, this racial practice, led, of course, to a denial of the claims of medicine: and the result inevitably followed that Jewry was left far behind in the study and conquest of disease. Medicine in the Talmud, for some slight knowledge of which I owe a debt to Preuss, contains no such germinal or fecund properties as are found in Greece, and it is hardly true that “In unserem Talmud kann man jedes lesen und alles ist schon einmal dagewesen”.

As time passed, civilisation made of the Jew a wanderer. He no longer owned and tilled his own soil, but in many communities, in many nations and in almost every town, a small isolated band of Jews was to be found strongly united among themselves, an impenetrable wall of racial boundary and of racial faith around them; they were a people set apart with their own customs, food, teaching, modes of work, a hard-working God-fearing, upright people, making good citizens because of their loyalty, industry and frugality and their due recognition of rightful authority. Here was matter for experiment on the large scale. While them-selves guarding their spiritual isolation, a great people were submissive to laws, to communal pressure, to cultural influences, to civic practices and to personal contact, in alien surroundings. And up to quite recent times this condition has existed for centuries almost unohanged. In the last half century greater changes have taken place in these fixed conditions than in the preceding fifty generations.