Sex and Society | Page 8

products of the body and of the quantity of
materials consumed in the metabolic process indicates a relatively
larger consumption of energy by man. It is stated that man produces
more urine than woman in the following proportion: men, 1,000 to
2,000 grams daily; women, 1,000 to 1,400 grams. As age advances, the
amount diminishes absolutely and relatively in proportion to the
diminution of the energy of the metabolic process. A table prepared
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