Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/221

Rh marked and are said to be significant. In woman the blood contains a less number of red corpuscles—about four million five hundred thousand in a cubic millimetre to five million in man. It has a larger percentage of water and a lower specific gravity. As compared with man, therefore, woman is naturally somewhat anæmic. The pulse-beat is from eight to twelve per minute faster than in man.

Some interesting differences are now clearly made out between man and woman in respect to birth, death, and disease. Statistics show that about one hundred and five boys are born to every one hundred girls in Europe and America. The proportion in other countries and among uncivilized races is said to be nearly the same. The greater mortality of males, however, begins with birth and continues throughout childhood and adolescence and the greater proportion of adult years. If, therefore, a count be made of boys and girls or men and women at any age after the first year, the females are found to be in a considerable excess, and this notwithstanding the decimation of women by diseases incidental to the child-bearing stage of their lives. These results, formerly attributed to accidental causes, are now known to be due to the greater natural mortality of males, and this is found to be in harmony with another series of sexual differences, namely, the greater power of woman to resist nearly all diseases. Hospital statistics show that women are less liable to many forms of disease, such as rheumatism, hæmorrhages, cancer, and brain diseases; and that while they are more liable to others, such as diphtheria, phthisis, scarlet fever, and whooping-cough, even in these the percentage of fatal cases is so much less that the absolute number of deaths falls considerably below that of men. Sudden deaths from internal causes are much less frequent among women. They endure surgical operations better than men, and recover more easily from the effects of wounds. They also grow old less rapidly and live longer. Among centenarians there are twice as many women as men. Women retain longer the use of their legs and of their hands. Their hair becomes gray later, and they suffer less from senile irritability and from loss of sight, hearing, and memory. In brief, contrary to popular opinion, woman is more hardy than man, and possesses a larger reserve of vitality. In this connection the absence of physical abnormities in woman should be noted. A mass of evidence from anthropological studies in Italy and England shows that degeneration marks, monstrosities, and almost all kinds of variations from the normal type are much less common in woman than in man. Here, too, we may note that statistics of the diseases to which men, women, and children are severally most subject, show a somewhat marked similarity between the diseases of women and of children.