PARESIS AMONG THE JEWS.

Abstract

In the London<i>Lancet</i>of October 27, there is an interesting editorial analysis of an article by Beadles, of Colney Hatch Asylum,¹on insanity among the Jews. One of the most interesting observations made by this author is that of the great preponderance of paretic dementia in this race. Thus he found that 21 per cent, of all male Jews admitted in the London County asylums were paretics, while the proportion in the average asylum population of England is, according to the most recent report of the Commission in Lunacy (1899), only 13 per cent. In female Jews the ratio is not above that of insane females generally, and we find, therefore, that paresis is 60 per cent. more frequent among Jewish men than among other male patients of English asylums. The predominant cause, or at least antecedent, of paresis is syphilis, and this fact is therefore of the