d me that women would let themselves be operated upon
almost as though their flesh were an alien thing. Giordano
told me that even the pains of childbirth caused relatively
little suffering to women, in spite of their apprehensions.
Dr. Martini, one of the most distinguished dentists of Turin,
has informed me of the amazement he has felt at seeing women
endure more easily and courageously than men every kind of
dental operation. Mela, too, has found that men will, under
such circumstances, faint oftener than women.[73]

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).....