TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 852, 29 June 1888, Page 7

TEMPERANCE.

JEWS AND INEBRIETY. The Jewish Chronicle says that Dr Norman Kerr, the well-known writer on the physiological aspects of inebriety, has just pubfished (Lewis, Gower street) a new work, entitled ‘lnebriety : its Etiology, Pathology, Treatment, and Jurisprudence.’ We quote two references to Jews; —‘One fact with reference to religion, which stands out in bold relief, is that the community of the Jews is conspicuous by its absence from this sorrowful exhibition of suffering humanity? and puts to open shame both Protestants and Roman Catholics. It is possible that a very few Jews have been classified under the denomination of Protestant, but I have never known of such an occurrence. The temperance of the Jews is proverbial. Intensive as my professional intercourse has been, with them, I have never been consulted for inebriety in the person of a Jew, while my advioe has been sought for this complaint by a very large number of Christians.’ * Under the last head—religion —I have referred to the remarkable temper, ance of-the Jews. In my opinion their general freedom from inebriety, in almost every clime and under almost all conditions (there are a very few-exceptions to this is as much due to racial as to hygienic, and more to racial than to religious influences. This extraordinary people has, amid wondrous vicissitudes, preserved a variety of distinctive characteristics, and I cannot help feeling tliat some inherited racial power of control, as well as some inherited racial unsusceptibil ty to narcotism, strengthened and oonfirmed by the practice of various hygienic habits, has been the main reason for their superior temperance. Even among those Jews in tvbom there has been an usual enjoyment of alcohol drinking, when (though they were not ‘drunk’) there has been a slight thickening of the speech, glibness of tongue, and unwonted exuberance of spirits, evidencing a certain amount of alcoholic poisoning, I have never detected the existence of the disease inebriety. Of this strong impulse to alcohoiio or other narcotism 1 have never seen a case among this distinctive people.’