Even within the philosophical field it appears that women have certain rather restricted tastes. Ladies' philosophers, according to the experience of a well- known West End bookseller, are Schopenhauer, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Renan. 1 That is to say, that women are attracted to the most concrete of all abstract thinkers, to the most poetic, to the most intimately personal, and above all to the most reli- 1 Westminster Gazette, 13th May 1893.
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gious, for every one of these thinkers was saturated through and through with religious emotion.
Religion, — This leads us to inquire what part women have had in the creation of religions. No one will question wonifinls *pritnHg f or religion, whatever the organic basis of that aptitude may be: what part have women had within historical times in the making of religions?
In order to answer this question I have searched A Dictionary of all Religions published in the early part of the present century. It constitutes a fasci- nating but painful page in the history of humanity. Some record is here given of about 600 religious sects, and I find that of these only seven were founded by women. That is to say, that of all the great religious movements of the world nearly 99 in every 100 have received their primary impulse from men, however willing women may have been to follow. The seven sects in question are the Bourignonists, the Buchanists, the Philadelphians, the Southcottians, the Victims, the Universal Friends, and the Wilhelmin- ians. (Some others could be added from more recent times, but it is not probable that the percentage would be greatly changed.) It is of some interest to determine the character of these sects, which are all of a more or less Christian character, and mostly arose within the last few centuries. Madame Bourig- non was a native of Flanders, and so deformed that at birth there was some question of stifling her as a monster. She combined great intellectual power with a broad and tolerant mysticism — a combin- ation by no means uncommon — inculcating reliance on inward impulses, the rejection of outward forms of worship, and acquiescence in the divine will She was equally opposed to Catholicism and Protestantism, and her personality Was greater than any movement she initiated. Mrs. Buchan, of Glasgow, belonged to a different type. She believed she was the woman spoken of in the Apocalypse (Rev. xii.), and that she Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 191 could conduct her followers to heaven without dying, but she soon died and her sect with her. She was probably insane. The Philadelphians were a sect of mystics and universalists founded by Jane Leadley in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Her views in many respects resembled Madame Bour- ignon's, and the Philadelphian Society was a body of considerable importance, including many men of learning. Joanna Southcott and her delusions pro- duced so great an impression at about the beginning of the present century that she is still well remem- bered. She was scarcely sane. The Society of Victims was a curious body of ascetics founded by Madame Brehan in the eighteenth century; it was of somewhat crazy character, and appears to have had no elements of vitality. The Universal Friends were established by Jemima Wilkinson in America in the last century. She had a trance in early life, became inspired and able to work miracles, seceded from the Quakers, and founded a town called Jerusalem. She was an eloquent preacher, and is said to have been an ambitious and selfish woman who died very wealthy from the donations of her followers. The Wilhelm- inians were the disciples of Wilhelmina, a Bohemian woman of the thirteenth century. She believed that the Holy Ghost was incarnated in her anew, and she had the somewhat beautiful thought that while the blood of Jesus only saved devout Christians, through her there was salvation for Jews, Saracens, and unworthy Christians. On the whole, it can scarcely be said that this group of sects shows badly, bearing in mind the general character of religious sects; they were mostly tolerant, with a strong tendency to mysticism and disregard of ritual and method, and with a very pronounced element of human charity. Still the curious fact emerges that while women usually form the larger body of followers in a religious movement, as well as the most reckless and devoted, they have initiated but few religious sects, and these have had Google 192 MAN AND WOMAN.
little or no stability. Women have usually been content to accept whatever religion came to hand, and in their fervour they have lost the capacity for cold, clear-sighted organisation and attention to de- tails. They can supply much of the living spiritual substance, if a man will supply the mould for it to flow into. The study of the Salvation Army, the most remarkable religious movement of recent times, is instructive from this point of view.
Women have played a very large part in Christianity from the very first, though in early times it was an undistinguished part. As a rule women take but a small part in revolutions (although a large part in revolts which are of more hasty and temporary character), but an analysis of the mortuary epigraphs from the Catacombs of Rome, contained in De Rossi's work, La Roma Soiterraneoy showed that 40 per cent, of them were of women. (Lombroso and Laschi, Le Crime Politique^ 1892, tome ii. p. 10.) If we ask what definite and permanent contributions to the structure of the Qatholic Ch urch have been made by its vast army of women followers, we may find a brief but author- itative answer by Cardinal Manning in his Preface to the trans- lation of St. Catherine of Genoa's very beautiful little devotional work, the Treatise on Purgatory: — "Two of the greatest festi- vals of the Catholic Church had their origin in the illumination of humble and unlearned women. The Feast of Corpus Christi was the offspring of the devotion of the Blessed Juliana of Retinne; the Feast of the Sacred Heart of that of the Blessed Margaret Mary: to St. Catherine of Sienna our Lord vouchsafed the honour of calling back again the Sovereign Pontiff from the splendid banishment of Avignon to the throne of the Apostolic See; to St. Teresa the special gift of illumination, to teach the ways of union with Himself in prayer; to Blessed Angela of Foligno the eighteen degrees of compunction, and His own five poverties; and to St Catherine of Genoa an insight and per- ception of the state of Purgatory, which seem like the utterances of one immersed in its expiation of love."
Politics. — It is somewhat remarkable that women have shown far less intellectual ability in the creation of religions than in the very different sphere of politics. More than sixty years ago Burjiach re- marked that women are probably more fitted for politics than mefi, and he instanced the large number Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 193 ^ ^ of able queens.^ "J. S. Mill many years afterwards also made some remarks to the same effect in his Subjection of Women. Among all races and in all parts of the world women have ruled brilliantly and with perfect control over even the most fierce and turbulent hordes. Among many primitive races also all the diplomatic relations with foreign tribes are in the hands of women, and they have sometimes decided on peace or war. The game of politics seems to develop very feminine qualities in those who play at it, and it may be paying no exces- sive compliment to women to admit the justice of old Burdach's remarks. Whenever their education has been sufficiently sound and broad to enable them to free themselves from fads and sentimentalities, women probably possess in at least as high a degree as men the power of dealing with the practical questions of politics.
It cannot be said that in this chapter we have reached any very definite results. A few careful experiments which need confirmation and extension, a certain number of observations on irregular masses of data, accumulated in the practical experiences of life, which have their value although they are open to varied misinterpretation — this is about all that experimental psychology has yet to show us in regard to the intellectual differences of men and women. Beyond that is mere speculation, founded, to what extent we cannot yet tell, on temporary social and educational differences. This is not sur- prising. Psychology as a science was only born yesterday, and even to-day it can scarcely be said to exist in England. Up till yesterday psychology was left in the hands of the metaphysicians who concocted elaborate speculative systems, each according to his own sweet will. And happy was he who from the indigestible mass could pull out a plum of positive 13 Google 194 MAN AND WOMAN.
fact Psychology is the youngest of the sciences, but it may perhaps be safely said that in the immediate future there is none that will grow with such rapidity.
It is a significant fact that the only journal in England giving any attention to psychology in its broad scientific bearings is called "A Journal of Philosophy and Psychology." There is certainly a psychology of philosophy, as Mr. Alexander Fraser is trying to teach us {e.g. " The Psychological Basis of Hegel- ism," Am. Jr. Psych., July 1893), but otherwise there is just as much connection between philosophy and psychology as between philosophy and mathematics, or philosophy and chemistry, or philosophy and physics; and once ali these sciences were " philosophical," as the so-called Philosophical Transactions still bear witness. Philosophy is the matrix out of which all the sciences have slowly been formed. While they are still small and shapeless the metaphysician can use them as playthings and bend them to his own purpose, but one by one they grow too big for him, and escape from his grasp to stand on their own feet Google CHAPTER IX.
METABOLISM.
THE BLOOD — RED CORPUSCLES MORE NUMEROUS IN MEN — AMOUNT OF HiEMOGLOBIN GREATER IN MEN— SPECIFIC GRAVITY HIGHER IN MEN — THE SEXUAL DIFFER- ENCES IN THE BLOOD COINCIDE WITH THE APPEARANCE OF PUBERTY — RISE IN THE SPECIFIC GRAVITY OF THE BLOOD OF WOMEN IN OLD AGE — THE PULSE-RATE — ALWAYS HIGHER IN SMALL THAN IN LARGE ANIMALS — SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE HUMAN AND OTHER SPECIES — NOT NOTABLY GREATER THAN DIFFER- ENCES IN SIZE WOULD LEAD US TO EXPECT.
RESPIRATION — VITAL CAPACITY MUCH GREATER IN MEN — MEN PRODUCE MORE CARBONIC ACID — COSTAL RESPIRA- TION OF WOMEN AND ABDOMINAL RESPIRATION OF MEN — RECENT INVESTIGATIONS SHOWING THAT THIS SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IS PURELY ARTIFICIAL — IT DOES NOT EXIST AMONG SAVAGE WOMEN, NOR AMONG THOSE WHO DO NOT WEAR CORSETS — THE ORIGIN OF CORSETS — THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE ACTIVITY OF WOMEN — TEMPERA- TURE — NO SEXUAL DIFFERENCE YET CLEARLY SHOWN.
EXCRETION — URINE PROBABLY RELATIVELY GREATER IN AMOUNT IN WOMEN, AND UREA RELATIVELY LESS — SPECIAL INFLUENCES AFFECTING WOMEN.
SUSCEPTIBILITY TO POISONS — SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE SELECTIVE ACTION OF POISONS ON DIFFERENT ORGANS — ARSENIC — OPIUM — MERCURY — SPECIAL SEXUAL SUS- CEPTIBILITIES TO POISONS — CHLOROFORM — LEAD — ALCOHOL THE BEST EXAMPLE OF SEXUAL SELECTIVE ACTION ON NERVOUS SYSTEM — TENDS TO ATTACK THE BRAIN IN MEN, THE SPINAL CORD IN WOMEN.
Google 196 man and woman.
HAIR AND PIGMENTATION — SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN DIS- TRIBUTION, ETC., OF HAIR — THE EYES AND PROBABLY HAIR ARE DARKER IN WOMEN— POSSIBLE ADVANTAGES OF PIGMENTATION.
THE BLOOD.
By " metabolism " we mean the intimate vital process — so far as chemistry and physics can reveal it — which is for ever changing and renewing the tissues of the body. When we reach the blood we come close to the central metabolic process of life, for it is the blood which is the direct source of the material for this process. Except such elementary creatures as the Protozoa, all animals possess blood, though with great individual varieties with regard to constituents, character, and colour. Roughly speak- ing, the blood of vertebrates consists of three elements, the plasma or fluid portion, the white cor- puscles, and the red corpuscles. Of these, the plasma is the most primitive, and the red corpuscles the latest to appear in the course of evolution. In the human species during childhood we naturally find that there are fewer red corpuscles than in adult age, and also that the haemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying element in the red corpuscles) is less in amount, while the white corpuscles are more abundant than in later life (Hayem).
Denis, and afterwards Lecanu, were the first to draw attention to the fact that there are any sexual differences in the blood; and the results of these in- vestigators, confirmed at a somewhat later period by Becquerel and Rodier, showed that the blood of men contains less water and more red corpuscles, and is consequently of a higher specific gravity, than that of women; these statements have since often been demonstrated.
There appears to be no evidence showing con- clusively that the white corpuscles are more or less Google METABOLISM. 1 97 numerous in women than in men, 1 but all physiological chemists are agreed that there are more red corpuscles in the male than in the female, not only in man, but also in many lower animals.
Cadet found in men on an average 5,200,000 red corpuscles to 4,900,000 in women, and Korniloff, using a different method — Vierordt's spectroscope — found a similar slight difference. (See Hay em's great work, Du Sang, Paris, 1889, pp. 184 et seq) Welcker gives the number of red blood corpuscles per c. mm. as 5,000,000 in men, 4,500,000 in women; or, otherwise ex- pressed, as 100 to 90. Laache, in an analysis of sixty cases, has found the mean to be 4,970,000 per c. mm. for men, and 4,430,000 per c. mm. for women. Macphail finds 5,075,000 for healthy men, and 4,676,000 for healthy women. (Macphail, Art. on "Blood of the Insane" in Diet. Psych. Med.) Ehrmann and Siegel found 5,560,000 in men to 5,000,000 in women; Otto, 4,990,000 in men to 4,580,000 in women.
It is, however, by the amount of haemoglobin that we more accurately measure the functional power of the blood. Lichtenstein states that women from the ages of eleven to fifty average 8 per cent less haemoglobin than men. 2 According to M'Kendrick, there is 14.5 per cent, haemoglobin in man's blood, 13.3 per cent in woman's; according to Preyer, it is 12-15 P er cent * n man > 11 to 13 per cent in woman; during pregnancy the amount of haemoglobin is only about 9 to 12 per cent Bunge has suggested that a storage of the iron in haemoglobin takes place in the maternal organs even before the first conception, in readiness for the supply of the foetus through the placental circulation. Or we may say, as Lloyd Jones expresses it, that there is a general storing up of tissue food, partly as fat, partly as proteids, and a general reduction of katabolic energy.
A convenient and widely-used method for estimat- 1 Robin asserted that they are more numerous in women; Hayem has denied it.
9 UnUrsuchungm iiber den Hcrmoglobingchalt des B lutes, Leipzig, Google I98 MAN AND WOMAN.
ing the quality of the blood is by obtaining its specific gravity. It is well recognised that the specific gravity of the blood is higher in men than in women, and that it falls in pregnancy (though very slightly), after ex- ercise, and after taking food (especially if much water is drunk). In this country the specific gravity of the blood has been very carefully investigated with interesting results by Dr. Lloyd Jones. 1 He has taken the specific gravity of the blood (by Roy's method) of over fifteen hundred persons, in ordinary health, of both sexes and all ages, from birth to over ninety. The specific gravity, Lloyd Jones has found, is at its height at birth, and although generally lower in women than in men, it is about the same in both sexes before the fifteenth year, and is higher in old women than in old men.
In males the specific gravity is about 1066 at birth, and falls during the subsequent two years, being about 1050 in the third year; thence it rises till about seventeen years of age, when it is about 1058. It remains at this height during middle life, and falls slightly in old age.
In females the specific gravity, starting at about 1066 at birth, falls in infancy, as in males, to about 1049 in the third year. Thence it rises till the fourteenth year, when it is 1055.5. Between seventeen and forty-five years of age it is lower than at the age of fourteen, and is about three degrees lower than in men.
Dr. Lloyd Jones also points out that the specific gravity of the blood varies with individual constitution; it is lower in persons with light than with dark hair, eyes, and complexion. He suggests that this difference is perhaps due to the incomplete fusion of British races, and that the more watery blood may 1 E. Lloyd Jones, " On the Variations in the Specific Gravity of the Blood in Health,'' 'Journal of Physiology t 1887; " Further Observations on the Specific Gravity of the Blood," September 1891. The latter paper is a lengthy and important monograph. Also the same author's " Preliminary Report on the Causes of Chlorosis," Brit, Med. Journal, 23rd Sept 1893.
Google METABOLISM. I99 belong to the Saxon and Scandinavian elements. " By the appearance of an individual, noting the age and sex and the colour of the iris, hair and complexion, one can form a fairly accurate estimate of what the specific gravity of his or her blood ought to be."
Dr. Lloyd Jones has recently made the interesting discovery that, notwithstanding the general low specific gravity of the blood in women, the plasma in women has a somewhat higher sp. gr. than in men, rising at puberty, while in men it remains stationary.
It will thus be seen that it is at puberty the sexual difference becomes marked. The appearance of menstruation coincides with low specific gravity, and the periodical recurrence of menstruation appears to produce a slight fall in the specific gravity. A very noteworthy sexual difference is the great range in the specific gravity of the blood, consonantly with health, in girls from the ages of fifteen to twenty-two; and the lower limit during this period falls to a very low point It is the age of anaemia, and Dr. Lloyd Jones makes the very reasonable suggestion that chlorosis is but an exaggeration of a condition which is physio- logical at this age.
In old women the specific gravity rises, and Dr. Lloyd Jones suggests that this rise may be a factor in the greater longevity of women. It is certain that good physique is associated with high specific gravity of the blood, and poor physique with a low specific gravity; the blood of Cambridge undergraduates is of very high specific gravity; the blood of workhouse boys of very low specific gravity. The old notion that the blood is the index of fine race is by no means absurd. Nature indicates her own aristocrats nowhere more clearly than in the blood. Only it is not by the supposed blueness of their blood that we can recognise Nature's aristocrats, but by the number of red corpuscles per c. mm.
This difference in the quality of the blood of men and women is fundamental, and its importance can- not be exaggerated; although it is possible that its Google 200 MAN AND WOMAN.
significance may be to some extent neutralised by other factors.
Pulse-Rate. — The rapidity of the heart's action varies very greatly among animals, the heart beating more slowly in proportion to the animal's greater size, but the rule not being perfectly correct if we compare, for example, birds with mammals. The pulse-rate usually preserves with the respiration-rate a relation of about 4 to i. In birds the pulse-rate is very rapid; in the mammalian series, we find, for instance, that the pulse-rate of the mouse is 120, that of the dog 75, of the horse 42, of the elephant 28. In the same species there are differences which are clearly associated with the bulk of the organism. Large vigorous races of dogs have a slower pulse than smaller races. Dr. Seymour Taylor remarks that he has taken the pulse-rate of gigantic muscular men employed in quarrying and other laborious occupations, men of the Cumberland fells, accustomed to violent struggles in the wrestling arena but of naturally ponderous deliberate nature, and has been surprised to find that their hearts, when at rest and in perfect health, have gone through but 60 cycles in the course of a minute, in one case only 40. 1 There are variations among human races which seem to be accounted for by con- siderations of size, and not, as Delaunay 2 tried to show, by a connection between inferiority and a quick pulse: thus if we take 72, which is B£clard's standard for the Frenchman, the pulse-rate of the small-bodied Javanese is said to be as high as 84, that of the Chinese and Nicobar Islanders 77, while Jousset states that among Asiatics and Africans generally the pulse- rate varies between 77 and 86. Among Bashkirs, however, whose average height was not more than mm. 1 66 1, Weissenberg found that the average pulse- rate was 63.
1 " Remarks on the Slow Heart," Lancet, June 6th, 1891. 9 See his jnteresting discussion of the various influences which modify the pulse, Etudes de Biologic ComfarJe, 2*»* Partie, " Physiologic'? - Google METABOLISM.
Among nearly all animals the heart of the male beats more slowly than that of the female. In some animals, if we are to accept observations that are probably not very reliable, the differences are con- siderable: the lion's pulse-rate is 40 (Dubois), the lioness's 68 (Colin); the bull's 46, the heifer's 56 (Girard); the ram's 68, the sheep's 80. 1 In the human female there is a slighter but still well-marked dif- ference. According to Frankenhausen, the pulse- rate of the male before birth is 124 to 147, of the female 135 to 154. Depaul, from an examination of 41 male and 29 female foetuses during pregnancy, found that the average pulse-rate in the former is 139, in the latter 142. At birth and for some time later the two sexes remain very near together, and the pulse-rate does not approach its sexual rhythm until about ten years of age; in old age the pulse-rate of women seems to have a greater tendency to increase than that of men. Guy's table of the pulse-rate, according to sex and age, is as follows: — 2 Age.
Male.
Female.
2 Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology ', p. 181, and Gu?s Hospital Reports, vols. iii. and iv. See also Raseri, Arch, per PAntrop., 1880, pp. 46 etseq.
Google 202 MAN AND WOMAN.
80 in women; other observers give the average difference as somewhat greater; thus, according to Hardy and Bdhier, women show 10 to 14 more pul- sations a minute than men. Quetelet's figures (absolutely rather lower than Guy's), giving a rather greater sexual difference for early manhood and womanhood, a rather less difference for adult age, produce the same average difference as Guy's. Accepting, therefore, Guy's careful figures, we see that the average pulse-rate of civilised women is the same as that of boys about the age of puberty. It cannot be said that this difference is very notably greater than the general physical proportions of the sexes would lead us to expect RESPIRATION.
RESPIRATION.
It is well recognised that the "vital capacity," as the breathing power indicated by the spirometer is commonly called, is decidedly less in women than in men. Even during that stage of the evolution of puberty when the girl is heavier and taller than the boy, she is still, as Pagliani and others have shown, very markedly inferior in vital capacity as well as in muscular force. In adult age also, where there is the same height and circumference of chest, the ratio is 10 to 7 (Halliburton). The vital capacity of a man i\ metres in height is usually 2350 c. cm.; in a woman of the same height, 2000 c. cm. (M'Kendrick). The vital capacity is 3 litres in women to 3 J in men, at equal height the volume expired being 700 c. cm. less in women. According to Arnold, for an increase in height of 25 centimetres, there is in men an increase in vital capacity of 150 c. cm., in women of only 130 c. cm. (Delaunay). The investigations of the British Association have shown that in England in males the mid breathing capacity is 217 c. ins., in females about 132 c. ins., the maximum difference being at the ages of 20-40, after which there is a Google METABOLISM. 203 regular decrease in the breathing capacity of men, but less falling off in that of women.
The number of respirations at birth is 44 per minute, and gradually decreases to 18 in the adult, being very slightly higher in women than in men (Quetelet). Size has much to do with the number of respirations in every zoological group; thus the rhinoceros has 6 respirations a minute, the rat 21a This matter has been studied in recent years by Richet, 1 who argues that it is one of the greatest laws of comparative physiology that " all the functions in their activity and in their intensity are determined by the size of the animal" According to Sibson, the ratio of inspiration to expiration in male adults is 6 to 7; in women, children, and old persons, 6 to 8 or 9; other observers give rather different results.
Men produce more carbonic acid than women. According to Andral and Gavarret, the amount of carbon burnt per hour is, from eight to fifteen years of age, in the boy 7 gr. 8, in the girl 6 gr. 4; from sixteen to thirty, in the man 1 1 gr. 2, in the woman 6 gr. 4; that is to say, the amount consumed in man rises at puberty to nearly double that consumed in woman. There is an increase in women during pregnancy, and also after the cessation of the menses. Energetic people excrete more than less active people of the same weight, and, relatively, a child gives off twice as much as an adult One result of this marked sexual difference is that women have a less keen need of air. This was noted by Burdach, who remarked that it began at birth. It appears that when both men and women are exposed to charcoal fumes, women, having less need of oxygen, possess a greater chance of surviving. In the process of salt-making, according to Mr. S. Webb, it is found that women can work better than men in the heat of stoves. The same result has been alleged to follow 1 La ChaUur Animate.
Google 204 MAN AND WOMAN.
when the privation of oxygen is due to extreme altitude, so that women can live at heights where men would soon fall ill (Delaunay).
During normal respiration in civilised races, when the individual is awake, man's respiration is diaphragm- atic or abdominal, woman's is costal, the chest chiefly moving. The cause of this apparent sexual difference was at one time much disputed. Boerhaave noticed the difference of type in male and female infants; this has not, however, been confirmed by later inves- tigators. It is now, as Dr. Ballantyne remarks, 1 " usually admitted that respiration is chiefly abdominal in type during the first three years of life." The diaphragm is thus the most important respiratory muscle in the infant as well as in the adult male, or to an even greater extent The characteristic costal breathing of women begins, according to Sibson, about the tenth year of life. Sibson, as well as Bear, Massick, and Walsche, attributed its appearance to the use of corsets and similar external impediments. Hutchinson studied the matter carefully, 2 and came to the conclusion that the difference of breathing was not due to the restraints of clothing, for he found costal breathing in young girls who had never worn tight-fitting clothes. He argued that it was a natural adaptation to the child-bearing function in women. Hutchinson's investigations were for many years accepted as final; it became at least necessary, as Rosenthal pointed out, to admit that the costal breathing of women had become fixed by heredity into a secondary sexual character.
During the last few years, however, some fresh series of investigations, on a wider basis and with more accurate methods, have changed the accepted 1 Introduction to- Diseases of Infancy ', p. 170. It is not, however, universally admitted. Depaul, Sergi, and others take for granted that children's respiration is costal.
2 Todd and Bowman's Cyclopaedia of Anat. and Phys.. Art. "Thorax."
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