The William Sydney Thayer and Susan Read Thayer lectures in clinical medicine : Lecture 1, The hereditary factor in some diseases of the haemopoietic system. Lecture 2, Some diseases in the Jewish race / by Sir Humphry Rolleston Bart., K.C.B., M.D., Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge.

  • Rolleston, Humphry Davy, Sir, 1862-1944
Date:
[1928?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The William Sydney Thayer and Susan Read Thayer lectures in clinical medicine : Lecture 1, The hereditary factor in some diseases of the haemopoietic system. Lecture 2, Some diseases in the Jewish race / by Sir Humphry Rolleston Bart., K.C.B., M.D., Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Jews these diseases tend to occur very early in life and to be more rapidly fatal, whereas among gentiles the allied, though structurally somewhat different, changes occur less early in life and are less severe. DIABETES MELLITUS The incidence of diabetes mellitus in the Hebrew race is notorious, and the statistics of Joslin, Wallach, von Noorden, and Morrison, and of the records of the Metropolitan Life Assurance Company of New York support this impression. The incidence in Jews has been vari¬ ously estimated as being from twice to six times as high as in other races. Several reasons are given for this, such as the association with overweight and obesity, excessive eating of food generally and of sweets in particular, a sedentary life, and the highly nervous state so common in the race. Solis-Cohen ascribes the increased incidence of diabetes in Jewish immigrants into the New World to the cruel perse¬ cutions the race has for centuries experienced in Russia, which induce a disturbance of the autonomic-endocrine-balance. The relation between obesity and diabetes mellitus is of interest. That obesity so frequently precedes the onset of diabetes, which may eventually lead to disappearance of the excessive storage of fat, is an established cycle of morbid metabolism. It is clear that they both may be the result of excessive and unsuitable food or of endocrine disorder. The occurrence of diabetes in obese subjects suggests that there is a common metabolic vice which by progressing in a particular manner leads to diabetes, though John’s observations on the fasting blood-sugar and tolerance test suggest that there are two groups of the obese; in one diabetes is prone to occur, whereas in the other, which is due to familial tendencies, diabetes is not likely to supervene. The statistics of Anders and Jameson show that among obese persons diabetes follows in 1 out of every 12 gentiles, and in 1 out of 8 Jews, and the question arises whether the great incidence in Jews is due to a higher grade of obesity or to a greater liability to diabetes. Joslin is emphatic that diabetes is largely the penalty for obesity and is more likely to occur the greater the degree of obesity, in fact that a Jew becomes diabetic not in virtue of his race but because he is a fat Jew; for if the Jewish race were specially disposed to diabetes it should