Dr. Hough[69] has gathered some interesting historical and statistical matter bearing on the subject of Jewish resistance to disease and the benefit possessed by the race in relation to the immunity enjoyed by them in prevailing epidemics. The plague of 1346 did not affect them; according to Fracastor they escaped the typhus of 1505; Rau remarks their immunity to the typhus of 1824; Ramazzini noticed their exemption to the fatal intermittents of Rome, in 1691; and Degner says that they escaped the epidemic dysentery at Nimegue, in 1736. Richardson truly observes that "from epidemics the Jews have often escaped, as if they possessed a charmed life." This racial difference and benefit, when compared to other races, has more than once cost them dear. In the dark and ignorant ages, when men reasoned nothing from a physical basis, but attributed all and every phenomena to some supernatural agency, either heavenly or diabolical, it was but natural for such minds to associate this exemption with some purchased compact made with the devil, who was often also held accountable for the existence of the epidemics. The rational and law-of-nature observing Jew supposed to be in league with his satanic majesty could neither be seen nor heard in his own defense; consequently, massacres, pillaging, and such other barbarities that an insane popular fury could suggest, were the humane manifestations with which a Christian people visited their Jewish brothers, whose only sin consisted in worshiping the God of their fathers, and in strictly observing His laws and commandments. In France, Dr. Neufville found that, of one hundred children in the first five years of life, among the Jewish population, 12.9 die; while from the same number of the same aged class of Christians 24.1 die. One-half of all the Christians die at thirty-six years, and one-half of all the Jews at fifty-three years and one month. Dr. John S. Billings has gathered statistics relating to 10,618 Jewish families, consisting of 60,630 persons,[70] living in the United States in December, 1889, mostly descendants of Jews from the northern or middle nations of Europe. For our purpose only the deductions as to death-rate and tendency to longevity will be given. In this valuable paper Dr. Billings says: "When we come to examine the reports of deaths for five years furnished by these Jewish families, we find that they give an average annual death-rate of only 7.1 per 1000, which would be about one-half of the annual death-rate among other persons of the same average social class and condition living in this country." To this he adds that, provided the deaths at different ages among the Jews have been correctly reported, this race will, on comparison with those of other races, show a greater tendency to longevity, as the Jewish expectation of life is at each age markedly greater than that of the class of people who insure their lives, the average excess being a little over twenty per cent.