124 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1786. 



apply to the difference of mortalily in great towns and country situations? The 

 answer evidently is, that in great towns, rickets, scrophula, and other diseases 

 affecting the ])ones, and producing consequent mal-conformation of the female 

 sex, are more frequent than in healthy country situations. 



There is another circumstance which may have some influence in producing 

 that particular debility above-mentioned. It is this: as the stamina of the male 

 are naturally constituted to grow to a larger size, a greater supply of nourish- 

 ment in utero will be necessary to his growth than to that of a female. Defects 

 in this particular, proceeding from delicacy of constitution or diseases of the 

 mother, must of course be more injurious to the male sex. And though the 

 male children may be so lucky as to escape abortion and the perils of delivery, it 

 is probable that they will be more apt to languish under disease, or die at some 

 future period, from the application of noxious causes to an originally half-starved 

 frame. To a person little accustomed to consider physiological subjects, this 

 reasoning may appear somewhat obscure. It may perhaps be somewhat illustrated 

 by considering that nourishment of the foetus after birth which nature has pro- 

 vided for. Suppose every mother in a great city obliged to suckle and nurse her 

 own child, without the assistance of spoon-meat; and every mother in the adja- 

 cent country to do the same. Of the former there would not perhaps be 1 good 

 nurse in 5 ; and of the latter perhaps not 1 bad in 10. The difference of mor 

 tality that would ensue both to niothers and children thus situated, and the 

 greater sufferings of the male than female sex, may be easily conceived, but not 

 easily calculated. We see that when a woman conceives twins, and has 2 foetuses 

 in utero to nourish instead of one, it becomes peculiarly fatal both to her and her 

 offspring. The chances are above 4 to 1 greater against her, than against a 

 woman bringing forth 1 child, and about 2 to I against her issue.* The facts 

 relating to twins are singular and curious, at the same time that they serve to 

 confirm some of the preceding reasoning. Near 4- more twins die, and near ^ 

 more are still-born, than of single children. And why ? — It is not because they 

 meet with greater difficulties in the birth. On the contrary, it is a known fact, 

 that, being much smaller than other children, women bring them forth with 

 more ease. Does it not then proceed from a scanty nutrition, by which they are 

 oftener blighted in utero than single children ; and, when born alive, have less 

 strength to support life through the first stages of its existence. 



It is further worthy of observation, that though double the numbers of twins 

 die and are still-born, compared to single children, yet the proportion of male 

 twins lost to females is less. Only -^ more of the male sex die than of the female, 

 and only 4- more is still-born. Whereas of single children, whose proportional 



* Compare the 7th and 14th, 6th and iStlTinferences in the annexed extracts, — Orig. 



