Statistics show that during the first four or five years of life, more male children die than female.
Although whenever throughout Mr. Darwin’s Descent of Man he has been pleased to deal with the subject of structural variations, he has given us to understand that they are injurious to the constitution, and although he has shown that their appearance is much more frequent in men than in women, yet he does not seem to realize whither his admissions are leading him. He has proved by seemingly well-established facts that the female organism is freer from imperfections than the male, and therefore that it is less liable to derangements; also, that being more highly specialized, it is less susceptible to injury under unfavourable conditions; yet, in attempting to explain the reason why so many more male than female infants succumb to the exigencies of birth, he expresses the opinion that the size of the body and “especially of the head” being greater in males, they would be “more liable to be injured during parturition.”
Among the reasons urged by Mr. Darwin to account for the excess of women over men in all “old-settled” countries, is that of the exposure of grown men to various dangers, and their tendency to emigrate. Doubtless there is more emigration among men than among women, still men do not usually emigrate to a wilderness and rarely to sparsely settled countries. When men emigrate from one civilized country, they usually go to another civilized country; yet in all old-settled countries women are in excess of men. While the dangers to which men are exposed because of their greater physical activity have been many, and the accidents liable to occur from their harder struggle for existence more numerous than those to which women have been subjected, still it would seem that the danger to female life, incident to the artificial relations of the sexes under our present semi-civilized conditions, is more than an offset for that to which men are liable.
The fact must be borne in mind, however, that the diseases and physical disabilities of women, at the present time, although dangerous to health and life, are not organic, and will therefore disappear as soon as through higher conditions they are allowed the free expression of their own will in matters pertaining to the sexual relation. As the diseases peculiar to the female constitution are not caused by structural defects, but, on the contrary, are due to the overstimulation of the animal instincts in her male mate, or, to the disparity between her stage of development and his, they have not materially injured her constitution nor shortened her average duration of life, neither have they lessened her capacity for improvement.
With reference to the women of Greenland, Cranz says that while they
remain with their parents they are well off; but from twenty years of age till death, their life is one series of anxieties, wretchedness, and toil, yet, in spite of all their cares, toils, and vexations the women commonly arrive at a greater age than the men.[36]
That the imperfections of the male organism are already beginning to interpose themselves between man and many of the occupations and activities of advancing civilization, is only too apparent.
Sight, far more than any other sense, is the most intellectual, yet in the development of the visual organs it has been proved that men are especially deficient. Dr. Andrew Willson assures us that “colour-blindness is a condition which is certainly capable of transmission to the progeny. In one family the males alone were affected through seven generations.”
In an examination which was carried on some years ago under the supervision of Dr. Jeffries, among the pupils of the Boston schools, in which were 14,469 boys and young men, and 13,458 girls and young women, it was found that about one male in every twenty-five was colour-blind, while the same defect among the girls and young women was extremely rare, only 0.066 per cent. of them being thus affected.[37]
At a convention held in the city of Chicago for the purpose of organizing an association for educational reform, the teacher of drawing in the St. Paul schools made a statement that “four per cent. of all male pupils were colour-blind, while only one-tenth of one per cent. of female pupils were so affected.” No explanation was offered for this strange fact; indeed, it was pronounced a mystery, “even oculists and surgeons having given it up as impenetrable.”