Nervous diseases and eugenics of the Jews: a view from 1918.

The Jewish physician, specializing in psychiatry in Warsaw, Poland, Shneor Zalman Bychowski (1865-1934) was deeply involved in public affairs, and especially in Zionist activity. Although he supported the need for eugenic means to avert the degenerative trends among Eastern Jewish populations, he insisted that the notorious neuropathies of these Jews were not hereditary, but rather induced by the social and economic conditions to which these individuals were exposed. An abridged and annotated trans- lation of Bychowski's Hebrew article in the periodical Ha-Tekufah is presented.