Sex and Society | Page 9

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