Sex and Society | Page 8

from adults of both sexes, twenty-five years of age, of the average weight of sixty kilograms, shows a larger proportion both of inorganic and organic substances in the urine of men.[66] Milne Edwards has found that the bones of the male are slightly richer in inorganic substances than those of the female.[67]
The lung capacity of women is less, and they consume less oxygen and produce less carbonic acid than men of equal weight, although the number of respirations is slightly higher than in man. On this account women suffer deprivation of air more easily than men. They are not so easily suffocated, and are reported to endure charcoal fumes better, and live in high altitudes where men cannot endure the deprivation of oxygen.[68] The number of deaths from chloroform is reckoned as from two to four times as great in males as in females, and this although chloroform is used in childbirth. Children also bear chloroform well.[69] Women, like children, require more sleep normally than men, but "Macfarlane states that they can better bear the loss of sleep, and most physicians will agree with him.... One of the greatest difficulties we have to contend with in nervous men is sleeplessness, a result, no doubt, of excessive katabolism."[70] Loss of sleep is a strain which, like gestation, women are able to meet because of their anabolic surplus. The fact that women undertake changes more reluctantly than men, but adjust themselves to changed fortunes more readily, is due to the same metabolic difference. Man has, in short, become somatically a more specialized animal than woman, and feels more keenly any disturbance of normal conditions, while he has not the same physiological surplus as woman with which to meet the disturbance.
Lower forms of life have the remarkable quality of restoring a lost organ, and of living as separate individuals if divided. This power gradually diminishes as we ascend the scale of life, and is lost by the higher forms. It is a remarkable fact, however, that the lower human races, the lower classes of society, women and children, show something of the same quality in their superior tolerance of surgical disease. The indifference of savage races to wounds and loss of blood has everywhere been remarked by ethnologists. Dr. Bartels has formulated the law of resistance to surgical and traumatic treatment in the following sentence: "The higher the race, the less the tolerance, and the lower the culture-condition in a given race, the greater the tolerance."[71] The greater disvulnerability of women is generally recognized by surgeons. The following figures from Lawrie, Malgaigne, and Fenwick are representative:[72]
LAWRIE (GLASGOW)
============================================================== | Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ Pathological amputations...|110 cases| 29 || 41 cases| 7 Traumatic amputations......|106 " | 59 || 14 " | 4 |---------+------++---------+------ Total..................|216 cases| 88 || 55 cases| 11 |----------------++---------------- |or, 40.74 deaths|| 20 deaths | per 100 || per 100 -------------------------------------------------------------- A difference of 20.74 per cent. in favor of women.
MALGAIGNE (HOSPITALS OF PARIS)
============================================================== | Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ Major pathological amputa- | | || | tions................... |280 cases| 138 || 98 cases| 44 Minor pathological amputa- | | || | tions................... |106 cases| 9 || 40 cases| 2 Major traumatic amputations|165 " | 107 || 17 " | 10 Minor traumatic amputations| 73 " | 13 || 10 " | 0 |---------+------++--------+------ Total..................|624 cases| 267 ||165 cases| 56 |----------------++---------------- |or, 37.98 deaths|| 34.18 deaths | per 100 || per 100 -------------------------------------------------------------- A difference of 3.8 per cent. in favor of women.
FENWICK (NEWCASTLE, GLASGOW, EDINBURGH)
============================================================== | Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ Amputations................|304 cases| 86 || 64 cases| 16 |----------------++---------------- |or, 27.86 deaths|| 25 deaths per | per 100 || 100 -------------------------------------------------------------- A difference of 2.86 per cent. in favor of women.
TOTAL FOR THE THREE SERIES
=============================================================== | 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