150 years ago: A study on why Jews live longer than other peoples ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, May 18, 2026

150 years ago: A study on why Jews live longer than other peoples

Many newspapers in May 1876 published an article with the headline "The Vitality of the Jews"

It went through a number of statistics:

The Jews are the healthiest and longest lived people on the face of the earth. Their immunity from diseases of all forms is remarkable. Even the great epidemics pass them by with the infliction of much lighter scourge than falls upon other races. It is declared that the cholera never chose one of them for its victims, and, in fact, the deaths from this malady have been so few as almost to bear out the assertion. Suicide is seldom practiced among them. It has been computed, from statistics returned in certain provinces of Austria and Germany, that in a population of 1,000,000 the proportion of suicides between the Jews and the mixed white races was as one to four.
From data carefully studied Hoffman found that between the years 1823 and 1840 the number of stillborn among the Jews in Germany was as one in thirty-nine, and among other races as one in forty. Mayer ascertained that in Fürth the proportion of Jewish children who die between the ages of 1 and 5 years is 10 per cent., and of Christian children of same age it is 14 per cent. M. Neuville, calculating from the statistics of Frankfort, shows even a greater disparity existing among the children of the Jews. He also finds from his data that the average duration of the life of a Jew is 36 years and 9 months, while of the Christian it is 36 years and 11 months. “In the total of all ages half of the Jews born reach the age of 58 years and 1 month, while half of the Christians born attain the age of 36 years only.” One fourth of the Jewish population live beyond 71 years, but the same proportion of the Christian population live no beyond 59 years and 10 months. The official returns of Prussia give the Jews a mortality of 1.61 per cent. and the whole kingdom 2.62 per cent. While the Jews double their numbers in forty-one and one half years others require a period of fifty-one years.
In 1849 there was in Prussia one death for every 3140 Jews and one death for every thirty-two of the remaining population.

A Dr. Richardson writing in Diseases of Modern Life "ascribes the high vitality of the Jews to their sober way of living."

"The Jew drinks less than his ‘even Christian;’ he takes, as a rule, better food; he marries earlier; he rears the children he has brought into the world with greater personal solicitude; he tends the needy more thoughtfully; he takes better care of his poor; and he takes good care of himself. He does not boast to-morrow, but he provides for it, and he holds tenaciously to all he gets. To our Saxon eyes and Celtic eyes he carries these virtues too far; but thereby he wins, becomes powerful, and, scorning boisterous mirth and passion, is comparatively happy.”

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