Popular Science, 1894: The Existence of Wandering Jews

A number of observers have pointed to an alleged recent decline in quality within the field of layman-targeted scientific journalism, particularly that of the sort that appears in such magazines as one finds in airport gift shops. Perhaps they are right, but at any rate it is worth remembering how far the discipline has come.

Old magazines are always full of unintentionally comical things, most of them offensive to the modern eye, and so it is a fine thing in terms of our perspective as well as our amusement that Popular Science has now released the entirety of its past archives onto the web, where those of us with the most free time may search them for such terms as “Chinaman” and never be disappointed. Here, for instance, is the headline from a 1918 on the nascent Chinese love affair with tobacco:

Mr. Chinaman must have his ‘Melican cigarette

You may have to read that a second time before it hits. A search for the term “negro,” meanwhile, brings us the following 19th century scoop:

If we compare the average weight of the African negro brains given in the above table with those of the full-blood negro brains taken from the one hundred and thirty nine negroes raised in the United States of North America given below, it will be seen that the colder climate of the United States produces heavier brains in the negro than the warm climate of Africa.

The same article makes reference to a certain Dr. A. Wiesbach, who bears the distinctly archaic characterization of “a famous investigator of brains in the Austrian Empire” and who is paraphrased as explaining that Czech brains are far heavier than those of Italians. Likewise, the “South Slavonians occupy the most southern part of the empire, along the low-lying lands of the Danube, which accounts for the small size of their brains.”

I will note that I am among the world’s foremost aficionados of hilarious things one comes across in old publications, be it a 1948 National Geographic explaining how mail will soon be shot via rocket over the Atlantic and retrieved by either Europeans or Americans, as the case may be (the Trans-Atlantic Cable had been in existence for some three-quarters of a century at that point), or a 2001 New York Times in which Thomas Friedman calls on his readers to “keep rootin’ for Putin” in hopes of a new age of Russian transparency – or, for that matter, a 2004 New York Times in which Thomas Friedman again maintains that Russia is “on the right track” in terms of democracy, free speech, and the rule of law. Such things are to me as the forest is to the Native American, or “savage,” as the older magazines put such things.

Having said all of that, I was absolutely unprepared to come across a Popular Science article from 1894 in which it is proposed that the myth of the Wandering Jew is not actually a myth but rather a collective observation regarding the “neuropathic” compulsion found among some Jews to wander around for no good reason. I mean, I don’t even resort to using italics for emphasis very often, but today’s the fucking day, man.

The article in question eases us into the subsequent grand host of nonsense by way of the lead sentence, itself a lesser if perhaps more fundamental bit of nonsense:

There is always something of truth in even the most confused of legends.

It would be hard to imagine such an assertion appearing in any publication within the science/skepticism axis in our own day, which is reassuring, as such an opinion is not only demonstrably false, but also demonstrably the sort of thing one might believe if one is in the habit of writing articles about how Jews have a genetic tendency to run around Europe doing nothing in particular simply because they feel an inward compulsion to do so, thereby proving the fact of the Wandering Jew. See, there go the italics again.

But then I am being an Interrupting Anglo-Saxon, when I should instead allow M. Henri Coupin, author of the piece in question, to make his case as he sees fit. Coupin was telling us of the truth that may always be distilled from falsehood:

Such is the case, for example, with the widespread legend of the Wandering Jew, which seems at first sight to have been wholly invented, but which can in reality be explained by examples originating in neuropathy.

An Israeli soldier seeks help after several Jews wander right into a goddamn wall.

“Neuropathy” being presumably a few rungs above phrenology on the Ladder of Things That Are Actually Science, let us hear Coupin out as he cites those whose scholarship in the field of Jews Who Jog eclipse even his own knowledge. Note that we are dealing with scientists here, and not theologians; everyone concerned appears to agree that there is not simply one immortal Jew running to and fro across Europe for two thousand years and being captured in various engravings in the process, but rather a series of individual Jews possessing no additional magical attributes other than those that all Jews presumably possess by virtue of their Jewcraft:

M. Meige assumes that there have been many wandering Jews, who have been taken for one and the same person, because they usually have the same general appearance and the same manner.

Good call, Monsieur Meige. But then what is the explanation?

These persons have been neuropathic Jews, possessed by an irresistible inclination to travel.

I do not want to spoil the rest of the article for those of my readers who may be Jewish and thus inclined to find out these things for themselves in the neuropathic privacy of their own homes; I understand that simply sitting still long enough to read a magazine article is a great difficulty for members of that tribe.

In conclusion, as much bitching as I do about the decline of the press, it is worth remembering that, on the whole, we have made some degree of progress in the manner in which we prevent nonsense from reaching the pages of even our science-oriented publications. Meanwhile, the Chinese have done little or nothing to reduce their smoking over the past century. Let’s cut short all of this talk of Sino-Ascendancy, then, shall we?