The same tolerance of pain and misery in women is shown by an examination of the number of male and female suicides from physical suffering. Von Oettingen states that in 30,000 cases the percentage of suicides from physical suffering was in men 11.4, in women 11.3;[74] and Lombroso, following Morselli, gives the following table representing the proportion out of a hundred suicides of each sex resulting from the same cause:[75]
| Men | Women | |
| Germany (1852-61) | 9.61 | 8.08 |
| Prussia (1869-77) | 6.00 | 7.00 |
| Saxony (1875-78) | 4.61 | 6.21 |
| Belgium | 1.34 | 0.84 |
| France (1873-78) | 14.28 | 13.56 |
| Italy (1866-77) | 6.70 | 8.50 |
| Vienna (1851-59) | 9.20 | 10.04 |
| Vienna (1869-78) | 7.73 | 70.37 |
| Paris (1851-59) | 10.27 | 11.22 |
| Madrid (1884) | 31.81 | 31.25 |
But these figures represent the numbers of suicides in each hundred of either sex, whereas suicide is three to four times as frequent among men as among women, and the absolute proportion of suicide among men from physical pain is, therefore, overwhelmingly great. Still more significant is a table given by Lombroso showing the percentage of suicides from want:[76]
| Men | Women | |
| Germany (1852-61) | 37.75 | 18.46 |
| Saxony (1875-78) | 6.64 | 1.52 |
| Belgium | 4.65 | 4.02 |
| Italy (1866-77) | 7.00 | 4.60 |
| Italy (1866-77) (financial reverses) | 12.80 | 2.20 |
| Norway (1866-70) | 10.30 | 4.50 |
| Vienna (1851-59) | 6.64 | 3.10 |
But the excess of male suicides over females is so great that, reckoned absolutely, about one woman to seven or ten men is driven by want to take her life.
Physical suffering and want are among the motives which, constitutional differences aside, would appeal with about the same force to the two sexes. But the great excess both of suicide (3 or 4 men to 1 woman) and of crime (4 or 5 men to 1 woman) in men, while directly conditioned by a manner of life more subject to vicissitude and catastrophe, is still remotely due to the male, katabolic tendency which has historically eventuated in a life of this nature in the male.
Woman offers in general a greater resistance to disease than man. The following table from the registrar-general's report for 1888[77] gives the mortality in England per million inhabitants at all ages and for both sexes from 1854 to 1887 in a group of diseases chiefly affecting young children:
| Disease | Year | Male | Female |
| Smallpox | 1854-87 | 183 | 148 |
| Measles | 1848-87 | 426 | 408 |
| Scarlet fever | 1859-85 | 763 | 738 |
| Diphtheria | 1859-87 | 157 | 176 |
| Croup | 1848-87 | 221 | 192 |
| Whooping-cough | 1848-87 | 451 | 554 |
| Diarrhoea, dysentery | 1848-87 | 932 | 835 |
| Enteric fever | 1869-87 | 288 | 277 |
or, a total mortality of 3,421 per million for the males and 3,328 for the females. The greater fatality of diphtheria and whooping-cough in the female is attributed to the smaller larynx of girls, and to their habit of kissing. In diphtheria, indeed, the number of girls attacked is in excess of that of the boys, and it does not appear that their mortality is higher when this is considered.[78] Statistics based on nearly half a million deaths from scarlet fever in England and Wales (1859-85) show a mean annual in males of 778, and in females of 717, per million living.[79] Dr. Farr reports on the mortality from cholera in the epidemic years of 1849, 1854, and 1866, that