Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/71

 A DIFFERENCE IN THE METABOLISM OF THE SEXES $7

Of the 459 centenarians 188 were men and 271 were women. 1 In Bavaria the women aged from 51 to 55 years alive in 1874 had lived in the aggregate more then seven million years, while the men of the same age had lived not so much as six and one-half million. 2 Turquan 3 gives a table showing the death rate of cen- tenarians in all France during a period of twenty years (1866 1885). From this it appears that there died in these years an annual average of 73 centenarians, of which 27 were men and 46 women. In only one year of the twenty did the deaths of men exceed those of women. Lombroso and Ferrero have shown that between 1870 and 1879 the inhabitants of the prisons and convict establishments in Italy who were over 60 years of age showed a percentage of 4.3 among the women, and 3.2 among the men, although the number of men condemned to prison for long periods is far greater than among women. "Women are not only longer lived than men, but have greater powers of resistance to misfortune and deep grief. This is a well-known law, which in the case of the female criminal seems almost exag- gerated, so remarkable is her longevity and the toughness with which she endures the hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life ..... I know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29 without any grave injury to health." 4 Woman's resistance to death is thus more marked at the two extremes of life, infancy and old age, the periods in which her anabolism is uninterrupted. Menstruation, reproduction, and lactation are at once the cause of an anabolic surplus and the means of getting rid of it. At the extremes of life no demand of this kind is made on woman, and her anabolic nature expresses itself at these times in greater resistance.

Dr. Lloyd Jones has determined that between 17 and 45

1 B. ORNSTKIN, " Makrobiotisches aus Griechenland," Archiv fur Bd. XVII, p. 193 seq.

G. MAYR, Die Gesetomdssigkeit im Gesellschafttleben, 1877, p. 144.

'V. TURQUAN, "Statistique des centenaires," in Revue scientifique, September I,

4 LOMBROSO e FERRERO, /of. ft/., chap. 10.