In these days, when sanitation claims a large share of attention, and when questions relating to the public health are canvassed and discussed on all sides, it may be of service to ask what lessons are to be learned from the diet, habits, and customs of the Jews. It is not generally known that their health and longevity are superior to those of other races, a fact which has been noted by careful observers from early times in this and other countries. An experiment, extending over thousands of years, has been made as to the sanitary value of certain laws in the Mosaic code. The test has been applied in the most rigid way, and if it had failed at any period in their eventful history, their name alone, like that of the Assyrian and Babylonian, would have remained to testify to their existence as a nation. The three deadly enemies of mankind—war, famine, and pestilence—have at times been let loose upon them. They have stood firm as a rock against the crushing power of oppression, when exercised at the call of political or religious antipathy. They have been pursued with relentless persecution, from city to city, and from one country to another, in the name of our holy religion. Restricted as to their trade, singled out to bear the burden of special taxation, confined in the most miserable and unhealthy quarters of the towns where they were permitted to dwell, living in the constant fear of robbery without redress, of violence without succor, of poverty without relief, of assaults against their persons, honor, and religion without hope of protection; in spite of woe after woe coming upon them, like the waves of a pitiless sea, they have not been broken to pieces and swallowed up, leaving not a wreck behind. No other race has had the fiery trials that they have gone through, yet, like the three Hebrew youths in the furnace, the smell of fire is not found on them. To-day their bodily vigor is unequalled, and their moral and mental qualities are unsurpassed.