Chapter 17

PREDISPOSITION TO AND EXEMPTION AND IMMUNITY FROM DISEASE.

The peculiar differences that exist between different animals in regard to their susceptibility to the action of drugs is even more remarkable than the differences that exist in their susceptibility to certain forms of disease. We can understand and appreciate what Koch tells us in regard to the different susceptibilities exhibited by the house-mice and the field-mice to the anthrax bacillus, or why a nursing child should offer different results, when exposed to the diphtheria bacillus or the contagious poison of any of the exanthemata, from those witnessed in the meat or promiscuously dieted child. We can also appreciate that different individuals have different susceptibilities to disease, as well as we understand that the same degree is not always in an unvarying point of resistance or susceptibility in the same individual. The investigation and study of these conditions teach us, however, that there is a cause, or that there are causes that induce and modify this susceptibility. But there are conditions that are as yet beyond our comprehension. Take, for instance, two animals, both vertebrates, mammals, and dwelling together, eating the same food, and even having a mutual understanding or sympathy of mind and affections, having a like circulation, a like brain and nervous system, it would naturally be supposed that these two would exhibit a like susceptibility to the actions of narcotic poisons; but when we are told that one dog has taken 21 grains of atropia with impunity we are staggered. Atropia may not affect rabbits (as it does not), but the rabbit does not approach man in the same close relationship as the dog. Richardson administered to a healthy young cat 7 drachms of Battley's solution of opium, then 10 grains of morphia, and a little later 20 grains more of morphia without rendering the cat unconscious. The same experimenter gave to a pigeon 21, 30, and 40, then 50 grains of powdered opium on succeeding days with no bad effect. S. Weir Mitchell gave to three pigeons, respectively, 272 drops of black drop, 21 grains of powdered opium, and 3 grains of morphia without any effect.[72] On the other hand, horses show a like susceptibility to man to the action of drugs. In the island of Ceylon, a sloth can take 10 grains of strychnia with safety,--chickens presenting a like immunity to the poisonous effects of this alkaloid. While the dog offers such a contrast to the action of drugs as compared to man, he is as subject to goitre, and they have been seen in a true state of cretinism.[73]

An Apache, or Colorado Indian, will prefer a dessert of decomposed gophers to one composed of the best canned peaches or Bartlett pears; he will devour the mass without any resulting evil, while a German--after many generations of training on all forms of sausages in every degree of age and ripeness, and on every form of cheese, from the refreshing cottage cheese from curdled milk and the delicious cream cheese, down through to all and every grade as far as Limburgher, or maggoty, common cheese--has not, in every case overcome the tendency of the civilized intestine and constitution to the action of sausage poison, something that has no effect on the ordinary Indian, or on the uncivilized dweller north of the arctic circle. Even the house-dog, that faithful companion of man, in many cases living on exactly the same fare as his master, is insensible to the action of this poison. An Indian will gorge and gormandize, after a prolonged fast, on such quantities and qualities of food that, if the ordinary white man were to indulge in a like feast, he would be in imminent danger of literal rupture or explosion, or liable to end in sudden apoplectic seizures, or, in case of a too healthy and active digestion, liable, owing to a lack of a correspondingly active condition of the excretory organs, to go off in uræmic coma. This sporadic and fitful feasting has no perceptible effect on the Indian, who either simply works it off in exercise, or sleeps it off in a long and prolonged period of sleep, during which his lungs work with the deep and steady pull and persistence that a tug-boat exhibits when towing in a large ship against the tide and a head wind,--working in and out more air in one respiration than the ordinary white man will in a dozen. All these different conditions are more or less plain to us and as easy of explanation,--just as plain as to how and why some birds eat gravel to improve their digestion. In the cases of different susceptibility to the action of strychnia or of narcotics, the explanation must of necessity, for the present, be more or less speculative. But how are we to account, even in the way of speculation, for the peculiar immunity, lack of predisposition and hereditary tendencies to disease exhibited by the Hebrew, who, since the history of the world, has been a civilized and rational being,--even for decades of centuries before the civilization of Europe? Living under the same forms of government, climate, and shelter, practically using the same varieties of food and drink, he exhibits an entirely different vitality and resistance to disease, decay, and death,--being, in fact, a puzzle to the demographic student. The only really marked difference that exists between this race and the others lies in the fact that the Hebrew is circumcised, other differences not being sufficiently constant to be accounted as factors. Circumcision is, in the opinion of the writer, the real cause of the differences in longevity and faculty for the enjoyment of life that the Hebrew enjoys in contrast to his Christian brother. Christian and uncircumcised races may individually, or in classes, develop some peculiar immunity or exemption, as, for instance, the tolerance to arsenic exhibited by some German mountaineers, or the peculiar safety enjoyed by the butcher class from attacks of continued fever;[74] but these exemptions are purchased at the expense of the future, the effects of arsenic, long continued, finally having its morbid effects, and the very plethora which is the bulwark of resistance in the butcher, this plethora being in the end a treacherous foe, diseases result from it which make a sudden ending to this class when it is least expected.

For an all around long-liver the Hebrew holds a pre-eminence, and, as the factor in this pre-eminence, circumcision has no counter-claimant. Circumcision is like a substantial and well-secured life-annuity; every year of life you draw the benefit, and it has not any drawbacks or after-claps. Parents cannot make a better paying investment for their little boys, as it insures them better health, greater capacity for labor, longer life, less nervousness, sickness, loss of time, and less doctor-bills, as well as it increases their chances for an euthanasian death.