===============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+----------+------++---------+------
Amputations................|1144 cases| 441 ||284 cases| 83
|-----------------++----------------
|or, 38.56 deaths || 29.29 deaths
| per 100 || per 100
---------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 9.27 per cent. in favor of women.
Legouest states in the same article that the lowest mortality of all
is in children from 5 to 15 years of age. Ellis quotes a passage from
a paper read by Lombroso at the International Congress of Experimental
Psychology held in London:
Billroth experimented on women when attempting a certain
operation (excision of the pylorus) for the first time,
judging that they were less sensitive and therefore more
_disvulnerable_, i.e., better able to resist pain. Carle
assured me that women would let themselves be operated upon
almost as though their flesh were an alien thing. Giordano
told me that even the pains of childbirth caused relatively
little suffering to women, in spite of their apprehensions.
Dr. Martini, one of the most distinguished dentists of Turin,
has informed me of the amazement he has felt at seeing women
endure more easily and courageously than men every kind of
dental operation. Mela, too, has found that men will, under
such circumstances, faint oftener than women.[73]
The same tolerance of pain and misery in women is shown by an
examination of the number of male and female suicides from physical
suffering. Von Oettingen states that in 30,000 cases the percentage of
suicides from physical suffering was in men 11.4, in women 11.3;[74]
and Lombroso, following Morselli, gives the following table
representing the proportion out of a hundred suicides of each sex
resulting from the same cause:[75]
------------------------------------------------------
| Men | Women
----------------------------------+---------+----------
Germany (1852-61).................| 9.61 | 8.08
Prussia (1869-77).................| 6.00 | 7.00
Saxony (1875-78)..................| 4.61 | 6.21
Belgium...........................| 1.34 | 0.84
France (1873-78) .................| 14.28 | 13.56
Italy (1866-77)...................| 6.70 | 8.50
Vienna (1851-59)..................| 9.20 | 10.04
Vienna (1869-78)..................| 7.73 | 70.37
Paris (1851-59)...................| 10.27 | 11.22
Madrid (1884).....................| 31.81 | 31.25
------------------------------------------------------
But these figures represent the numbers of suicides in each hundred of
either sex, whereas suicide is three to four times as frequent among
men as among women, and the absolute proportion of suicide among men
from physical pain is, therefore, overwhelmingly great. Still more
significant is a table given by Lombroso showing the percentage of
suicides from want:[76]
------------------------------------------------------
| Men | Women
--------------------------------------+-------+-------
Germany (1852-61).....................| 37.75 | 18.46
Saxony (1875-78)......................| 6.64 | 1.52
Belgium...............................| 4.65 | 4.02
Italy (1866-77).......................| 7.00 | 4.60
Italy (1866-77) (financial reverses)..| 12.80 | 2.20
Norway (1866-70)......................| 10.30 | 4.50
Vienna (1851-59)......................| 6.64 | 3.10
------------------------------------------------------
But the excess of male suicides over females is so great that,
reckoned absolutely, about one woman to seven or ten men is driven by
want to take her life.
Physical suffering and want are among the motives which,
constitutional differences aside, would appeal with about the same
force to the two sexes. But the great excess both of suicide (3 or
4 men to 1 woman) and of crime (4 or 5 men to 1 woman) in men, while
directly conditioned by a manner of life more subject to vicissitude
and catastrophe, is still remotely due to the male, katabolic tendency
which has historically eventuated in a life of this nature in the
male.
Woman offers in general a greater resistance to disease than man. The
following table from the registrar-general's report for 1888[77] gives
the mortality in England per million inhabitants at all ages and for
both sexes from 1854 to 1887 in a group of diseases chiefly affecting
young children:
------------------------------------------------------
Disease | Year | Male | Female
----------------------------+---------+------+--------
Smallpox....................| 1854-87 | 183 | 148
Measles.....................| 1848-87 | 426 | 408
Scarlet fever...............| 1859-85 | 763 | 738
Diphtheria..................| 1859-87 | 157 | 176
Croup.......................| 1848-87 | 221 | 192
Whooping-cough..............| 1848-87 | 451 | 554
Diarrhoea, dysentery........| 1848-87 | 932 | 835
Enteric fever...............| 1869-87 | 288 | 277
------------------------------------------------------
or, a total mortality of 3,421 per million for the males and 3,328 for
the females. The greater fatality of diphtheria and whooping-cough in
the female is attributed to the smaller larynx of girls, and to their
habit of kissing. In diphtheria, indeed, the number of girls attacked
is in excess of that of the boys, and it does not appear that their
mortality is higher when this is considered.[78] Statistics based on
nearly half a million deaths from scarlet fever in England and Wales
(1859-85) show a mean annual in males of 778, and in females of 717,
per million living.[79] Dr. Farr reports on the mortality from cholera
in the epidemic years of 1849, 1854, and 1866, that
the mean mortality from all causes in the three cholera years
was, for males, 19.3 in excess, for females, 17.0 in excess
of the average mortality to 10,000 living; so females suffered
less than males.... The mortality is higher in boys than in
girls at all ages under 15; at the ages of reproduction, 25 to
45, the mortality of women, many of them pregnant, exceeds the
mortality of men; but at the ages after 65 the mortality of
men exceeds the mortality of women.[80]
Statistics show that woman is more susceptible to many diseases,
but in less danger than man when attacked, because of her anabolic
surplus, and also that the greatest mortality in woman is during the
period of reproduction, when the specific gravity of the blood is low
and her anabolic surplus small. It is significant also that the point
of highest mortality from disease and of the highest rate of suicide
in the female, as compared with the male, falls at about 15 years,
and is to be associated with the rapid physiological changes preceding
that time.[81]
The numerical relation of the sexes at birth seems to be more variable
in those regions where economic conditions and social usages are least
settled, but in civilized countries the relation is fairly constant,
and statistics of 32 countries and states between the years 1865 and
1883 show that to every 100 girls 105 boys are born, or including
stillborn, 100 girls to 106.6 boys.[82] But the mortality of male
children so much exceeds that of female that at the age of five the
sexes are about in numerical equilibrium; and in the adult population
of all European countries the average numerical relation of the
sexes is reckoned as 102.1 women to 100 men. Von Oettingen gives a
representative table;[83] compiled from statistics of eight European
countries, showing that (omitting the stillborn) 124.71 boys to 100
girls die before the end of the first year, and that between the years
of 2 and 5 the proportion is 102.91 boys to 100 girls; or, about 25
per cent. excess of boys in the first year, and 3 per cent. in the
years between 1 and 5. In the intra-uterine period and at the very
threshold of life the mortality of males is still greater. The figures
of Wappaeus were 100 stillborn girls to 140.3 boys; Quetelet gave
the proportion as 100:133.5; and the statistics of fourteen European
countries during the years 1865-83 show that 130.2 boys were stillborn
to every 100 girls.[84] So that, while more boys than girls are
born living, still more are born dead. That this astonishingly high
mortality is due in part to the somewhat larger size of boys at
birth and the narrowness of the maternal pelvis is indicated by the
statement of Collins, of the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital, Dublin, that
within half an hour after birth only 1 female died to 16 males; within
the first hour 2 females to 19 males; and within the first 6 hours, 7
females to 29 males.[85] But that this explanation is not sufficient
is shown by the fact that a high mortality of boys extends through
the whole of the first year, and through five years, in a diminishing
ratio, and also that the tenacity of woman on life, as will be shown
immediately, is greater at every age than man's except during a period
of about five years following puberty. "There must be," says Ploss,
"some cause which operates more energetically in the removal of
male than of female children just before and after birth;"[86] but,
besides the more violent movement of boys and their greater size,
no explanation of the cause has been advanced more acceptably than
Haushofer's teleological one, quoted by Ploss, that Nature wished to
make a more perfect being of man and therefore threw more obstacles
in his way. A satisfactory explanation is found if we regard the young
female as more anabolic, and more quiescent, with a stored surplus of
nutriment by which in the helpless and critical period of change from
intra- to extra-uterine conditions it is able to get its adjustment to
life. The constructive phase of metabolism has prevailed in them even
during fetal life. That there is need of a surplus of nutrition in
the child at birth, or that a surplus will stand it in good stead,
is indicated by the results of the weighing of children communicated
by Winckel to the Gynaecological Society in Berlin in 1862. Winckel
weighed 100 new-born children, 56 boys and 44 girls, showing that
birth was uniformly followed by a loss of weight. The average
diminution was about 108 grams the first day, and but little less
the second day. At the end of five days the loss was 220 grams,
six-sevenths of which occurred during the first two days.[87] The
tendency to decreased vitality in girls after maturity and before
marriage, just referred to, must be associated with the katabolic
changes implied in menstruation and the newness to the system of this
destructive phase of metabolism.
We should expect the death-rate of men to run high during the period
of manhood, in consequence of their greater exposure to peril,
hardship, and the storm and stress of life. But two tendencies operate
to reduce the comparative mortality of men between the twentieth and
about the fortieth year: the fact of the severe male mortality in
infancy, which has removed the constitutionally weak contingent,
and the fact that during this period women are subject to death in
connection with childbirth. So that in the prime of life the mortality
of males does not markedly exceed that of females. But the statistics
of longevity show that with the approach of old age the number of
women of a given age surviving is in excess of the men, and that their
relative tenacity of life increases with increasing years. Ornstein
has shown, from the official statistics of Greece from 1878 to 1883,
that in every period of five years between the ages of 85 and 110
years and upward a larger number of women survive than of men, and in
the following proportion:
------------------------------------
Years | Men | Women
--------------------+-------+-------
85-90 | 1,296 | 1,347
90-95 | 700 | 820
95-100 | 305 | 370
100-105 | 116 | 168
105-110 | 52 | 69
110 and over | 20 | 34
------------------------------------
Of the 459 centenarians 188 were men and 271 were women.[88] In
Bavaria the women aged from 51 to 55 years alive in 1874 had lived in
the aggregate more than seven million years, while the men of the same
age had lived not so much as six and one-half million.[89] Turquan[90]
gives a table showing the death-rate of centenarians in all France
during a period of twenty years (1866-85). From this it appears that
there died in these years an annual average of 73 centenarians, of
whom 27 were men and 46 women. In only one year of the twenty did the
deaths of men exceed those of women. Lombroso and Ferrero have shown
that between 1870 and 1879 the inhabitants of the prisons and convict
establishments in Italy who were over 60 years of age showed a
percentage of 4.3 among the women, and 3.2 among the men, although the
number of men condemned to prison for long periods is far greater than
among women.
Women are not only longer-lived than men, but have greater
powers of resistance to misfortune and deep grief.
This is a well-known law, which in the case of the female
criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her
longevity and the toughness with which she endures the
hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... I
know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the
age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29
without any grave injury to health.[91]
Woman's resistance to death is thus more marked at the two extremes
of life, infancy and old age, the periods in which her anabolism is
uninterrupted. Menstruation, reproduction, and lactation are at once
the cause of an anabolic surplus and the means of getting rid of it.
At the extremes of life no demand of this kind is made on woman,
and her anabolic nature expresses itself at these times in greater
resistance.
Dr. Lloyd Jones has determined that between 17 and 45 years of age the
specific gravity of the blood of women is lower than that of men. In
old women the specific gravity rises above that of old men, and he
suggests that their greater longevity is due to this.[92] No doubt
the greater longevity of women is to be associated with the rise
in specific gravity of their blood, but this rise in the specific
gravity of women after 45 years is consequent upon their anabolic
constitution. High specific gravity in general is associated with
abundant and rich nutrition; it falls in women during pregnancy,
lactation, and menstruation, and when these functions cease it is
natural that the constructive metabolic tendency on which they are
dependent should show itself in a heightened specific gravity of the
blood (i.e., greater richness), and in consequence greater longevity.
Some facts in the brain development of women point to the same
conclusion. The growth of the brain is relatively more rapid in
women than in men before the twentieth year. Between 15 and 20 it has
reached its maximum, and from that time there is a gradual decline in
weight until about the fiftieth year, when there is an acceleration
of growth, followed by a renewed diminution after the sixtieth year.
The maximum of brain weight is almost reached by men at 20 years,
but there is a slow increase until 30 or 35 years. There is then a
diminution until the fiftieth year, followed by an acceleration, and
at 60 years again a rapid diminution in weight; but the acceleration
is more marked and the final diminution less marked in woman than in
man.[93] A table prepared by Topinard shows that woman from 20 to 60
years of age has from 126 to 164 grams less brain weight than man,
while her deficit from 60 to 90 years is from 123 to 158 grams.[94]
The only explanation at hand of this relative superiority of
brain weight in old women is that with the close of the period of
reproduction (the anabolic surplus being no longer consumed in the
processes associated with reproduction) the constructive tendency
still asserts itself, and a slight access of growth and vitality
results to the organism.
* * * * *
It must be confessed that the testimony of anthropologists on the
difference in variability of men and women is to be accepted with
great caution. As a class they have gone on the assumption that
woman is an inferior creation, and have almost totally neglected
to distinguish between the congenital characters of woman and those
acquired as the result of a totally different relation to society
on the part of women and men. They have also failed to appreciate
the fact that differences from man are not necessarily points of
inferiority, but adaptations to different and specialized modes of
functioning. But, whatever may be the final interpretation of details,
I think the evidence is sufficient to establish the following
main propositions: Man consumes energy more rapidly; woman is more
conservative of it. The structural variability of man is mainly toward
motion; woman's variational tendency is not toward motion, but toward
reproduction. Man is fitted for feats of strength and bursts of
energy; woman has more stability and endurance. While woman remains
nearer to the infantile type, man approaches more to the senile.
The extreme variational tendency of man expresses itself in a larger
percentage of genius, insanity, and idiocy; woman remains more nearly
normal.
The fact that society is composed of two sexes, numerically almost
equal, but differing in organic and social habits, is too significant
to remain without influence on the structural and occupational sides
of human life, and in the following chapters we shall note some of the
influences of sex, and of the differences in bodily habit of men and
women, on social forms and activities.