THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN. 211 



marked and are said to be significant. In woman the blood con- 

 tains 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 

 ana?mic. 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. Hos- 

 pital statistics show that women are less liable to many forms of 

 disease, such as rheumatism, haemorrhages, 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 abso- 

 lute 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 anthropo- 

 logical 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. 



