Sex and Society | Page 9

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