Among Jews in Eastern Europe the parting greeting was not the meaningless ’cheerio’ etc. but zei gezunt (be well). The wish and its fulfilment were often far apart. It was said that in matters of health, experts went to Glasgow to be shocked. They were rarely disappointed.
There was an emphasis on self-help and enabling the immigrants to become financially independent. The book shows how trachoma came to be perceived as an immigrant disease and how it was used as an issue in the attempt to control Jewish immigration. The book also examines the competition for bodies and souls between Jewish and Christian missionary welfare bodies in the Gorbals. It looks at the experience of Jewish patients in the psychiatric hospitals using contemporary case records to illustrate attitudes to mental illness and to the Jewish immigrants. It also shows the first moves by the immigrant Jews to take advantage of the educational opportunities in Glasgow and become doctors themselves.
By concentrating on one Jewish community and looking at all aspects of its health and welfare, the author builds up a picture of all the complex health and welfare issues at play in Glasgow, a great Victorian industrial society with its own social and medical problems.
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