Sex and Society | Page 7

beauty of the female form is due to the storing of adipose
tissue, and the form even of very slender women is gracefully rounded
in comparison with that of man. Bischoff found the following relation

between muscle and fat in a man of 33, a woman of 22, and a boy of 16,
all of whom died accidentally and in good physical condition:
Man Woman Boy Muscle 41.18 35.8 44.2 Fat 18.2 28.2 13.9
The steatopyga of the women of some races and the accumulation of
adipose tissue late in life are quasi-pathological expressions of this
tendency.
In tracing the transition from lower to higher forms of life, we find a
great change in the nature of the blood, or what answers to the blood,
and the constitution of the blood is some index of the intensity of the
metabolic processes going on within the organism. The sap of plants is
thin and watery, corresponding with the preponderant anabolism of the
plant. "Blood is a peculiar kind of sap," and there is almost as much
difference between this sap in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals
as between the latter and plants. Rich, red blood characterizes the forms
of life fitted for activity and bursts of energy. In his exhaustive work on
the blood Hayem has given a summary of the results of the
investigations of chemists and physiologists on the differences in the
composition of the blood in the two sexes. Contrary to the assertion of
Robin, Hayem finds that the white blood-corpuscles are not more
numerous in women than in men, and he also states that the number of
hæmatoblasts is the same in the two sexes. All chemists are agreed,
however, that the number of red corpuscles is greater in men than in
women. Nasse found in man 0.05824 of iron to 100, and in woman
only 0.0499. Becquerel and Rodier give 0.0565 for man, 0.0511 for
woman, and Schmidt, Scherer, and others give similar results. Welcker
(using a chromometer) found between the corpuscles of man and
woman the relation of 5 to 4.7, and Hayem confirmed this by
numeration. Cadet found in woman on the average 4.9 million
corpuscles per cubic millimeter, and in man 5.2 million. More recently
Korniloff, using still another method--the spectroscope of Vierordt--has
reached about the same result. The proportion of red blood-corpuscles
varies according to individual constitution, race, and sex. In robust men
Lacanu found 136 red corpuscles in 1,000; in weak men, only 116 in
1,000; in robust women, only 126 in 1,000; and in weak women,
117.[61] Professor Jones has taken the specific gravity of the blood of
above 1,500 individuals of all ages and of both sexes.[62] An
examination of his charts shows that the specific gravity of the male is

higher than that of the female between the ages of 16 and 68. Between
the ages of 16 and 45 the average specific gravity of the male is about
1,058, and that of the female about 1,054.5. At 45 years the specific
gravity of the male begins to fall rapidly and that of the female to rise
rapidly, and at 55 they are almost equal; but the male remains slightly
higher until 68 years, when it falls below that of the female. The period
of marked difference in the specific gravity of the blood is thus seen to
be coincident with the period of menstruation in the female. A chart
constructed by Leichtenstern, based upon observations on 191
individuals and showing variations in the amount of hæmoglobin with
age, is also reproduced by Professor Jones, suggesting that the
variations in specific gravity of the blood with age and sex are closely
related to variations in the amount of hæmoglobin. Leichtenstern states
that the excess in men of hæmoglobin is 7 per cent. until the tenth year,
8 per cent. between 11 and 50 years, and 5 per cent. after the fiftieth
year.[63] Jones states further[64] that the specific gravity is higher in
persons of the upper classes and lower in the poorer classes.
Observations of boys who were inmates of workhouses gave a mean
specific gravity of 1,052.8 and on schoolboys a mean of 1,056, while
among the undergraduate students of Cambridge University he found a
mean of 1,059.5. Several men of very high specific gravity in the last
group had distinguished themselves in athletics. "Workhouse boys are
in most cases of poor physique, and one can hardly find a better
antithesis than the general type of physique common among the athletic
members of such a university as Cambridge."[65] There is no more
conclusive evidence of an organic difference between man and woman
than these tests of the blood. They permit us to associate a high specific
gravity, red corpuscles, plentiful hæmoglobin, and a katabolic
constitution.
A comparison of the waste