Chapter 2

Motor ability in most of its forms is better in men than in women. In strength, rapidity of movement, and rate of fatigue they have a very decided advantage. These three forms of superiority are probably all expressions of one and the same fact--the greater muscular strength of men. Men are very slightly superior to women in precision of movement. This fact is probably also connected with their superior muscular force. In the formation of a new co-ordination women are superior. The superiority of men in muscular strength is so well known that it is a universally accepted fact. There has been more or less dispute as to which sex displayed greater manual dexterity. According to the present results, that depends on what is meant by manual dexterity. If it means the ability to make very delicate and minutely controlled movements, then it is slightly better in men. If it means ability to co-ordinate movements rapidly to unforeseen stimuli it is clearly better in women.[44]

We have no other than a utilitarian basis for judging some variations advantageous and others disadvantageous. We can estimate them only with reference to activity and the service or disservice to the individual and society implied in them, and a given variation must receive very different valuations at different historical periods in the development of the race. Departures from the normal are simply nature's way of "trying conclusions." The variations which have proved of life-saving advantage have in the course of time become typical, while the individuals in which unfavorable variations, or defects, have occurred have not survived in the struggle for existence. Morphologically men are the more unstable element of society, and this instability expresses itself in the two extremes of genius and idiocy. Genius in general is correlated with an excessive development in brain-growth, stopping dangerously near the line of hypertrophy and insanity; while microcephaly is a variation in the opposite direction, in which idiocy results from arrested development of the brain, usually through premature closing of the sutures; and both these variations occur more frequently in men than in women. There is also evidence that defects in general are more frequent in men than in women.

A committee reported to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1894,[45] that of some 50,000 children (26,287 boys, and 23,713 girls) seen personally by Dr. Francis Warner (1892-94) 8,941 were found defective in some respect. Of these, 19 per cent. (5,112) were boys, and 16 per cent. (3,829) were girls.

An examination of 1,345 idiots and imbeciles in Scotland by Mitchell showed the following distribution of the sexes:

Male Female Male Female Idiots 430 284 or 100 to 66.0 Imbeciles 321 310 or 100 to 96.5

showing that "the excess of males is much greater among idiots than among imbeciles; in other words, that the excess of males is most marked in the graver forms of the disease."[46]

A census of the insane in Prussia in 1880 showed that 9,809 males and 7,827 females were born idiots. Koch's statistics of insanity show that in idiots there is almost always a majority of males, in the insane, a majority of females. But the majority of male idiots is so much greater than the majority of female insane that when idiots and insane are classed together there remains a majority of males.[47] Insanity is, however, more frequently induced by external conditions, and less dependent on imperfect or arrested cerebral development. Mayr has shown from statistics of Bavaria that insanity is infrequent before the sixteenth year; and even before the twentieth year the number of insane is not considerable.[48] In insanity the chances of recovery of the female are greater than those of the male, and mortality is higher among insane men than among insane women. There is practical agreement among pathologists on this point.[49] Campbell points out in detail[50] that the male sex is more liable than the female to gross lesions of the nervous system--a fact which he attributes to the greater variability of the male.

An excess of all other anatomical anomalies, except cleft palate, is reported among males. Manley reports that of 33 cases of harelip treated by him only 6 were females.[51] It appears also that supernumerary digits are more frequent in males. Wilder[52] has recorded 152 cases of individuals with supernumerary digits, of whom 86 were males, 39 females, and 27 of unknown sex. A similar relation, according to Bruce, exists in regard to supernumerary nipples.[53]

Muscular abnormalities, monstrosities, deaf-mutism, clubfoot, and transposition of viscera are also reported as of commoner occurrence in men than in women.[54] Lombroso states that congenital criminals are more frequently male than female.[55] Cunningham noted an eighth (true) rib in 14 of 70 subjects examined. It occurred 7 times in males and 7 times in females, but the number of females examined was twice as large as the number of males.[56] The reports of the registrar-general show that for the years 1884-88, inclusive, the deaths from congenital defects (spina bifida, imperforate anus, cleft palate, harelip, etc.) were, taking the average of the five years, 49.6 per million of the persons living in England for the male sex, and 44.2 for the female.[57]

It has already been noted as a general rule throughout nature that the male seeks the female and physicians generally believe that men are sexually more active than women,[58] though woman's need of reproduction is greater,[59] and celibacy unquestionably impresses the character of women more deeply than that of man. Additional evidence of the greater sexual activity of man is furnished by the overwhelmingly large proportion of the various forms of sexual perversion reported by psychiatrists in the male sex.

Pathological variations do not become fixed in the species, because of their disadvantageous nature, but their excess in the male is, as we have seen in the case of variations which have become fixed, an expression of the more energetic somatic habit of the male.

A very noticeable expression of the anabolism of woman is her tendency to put on fat. "Women, as a class, show a greater tendency to put on fat than men, and the tendency is particularly well marked at puberty, when some girls become phenomenally stout."[60] The distinctive 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 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 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 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]