emic years of 1849, 1854, and 1866, that

the mean mortality from all causes in the three cholera years
was, for males, 19.3 in excess, for females, 17.0 in excess
of the average mortality to 10,000 living; so females suffered
less than males.... The mortality is higher in boys than in
girls at all ages under 15; at the ages of reproduction, 25 to
45, the mortality of women, many of them pregnant, exceeds the
mortality of men; but at the ages after 65 the mortality of
men exceeds the mortality of women.[80]

Statistics show that woman is more susceptible to many diseases,
but in less danger than man when attacked, because of her anabolic
surplus, and also that the greatest mortality in woman is during the
period of reproduction, when the specific gravity of the blood is low
and her anabolic surplus small. It is significant also that the point
of highest mortality from disease and of the highest rate of suicide
in the female, as compared with the male, falls at about 15 years,
and is to be associated with the rapid physiological changes preceding
that time.[81]

The numerical relation of the sexes at birth seems to be more variable
in those regions where economic conditions and social usages are least
settled, but in civilized countries the relation is fairly constant,
and statistics of 32 countries and states between the years 1865 and
1883 show that to every 100 girls 105 boys are born, or including
stillborn, 100 girls to 106.6 boys.[82] But the mortality of male
children so much exceeds that of female that at the age of five the
sexes are about in numerical equilibrium; and in the adult population
of all European countries the average numerical relation of the
sexes is reckoned as 102.1 women to 100 men. Von Oettingen gives a
representative table;[83] compiled from statistics of eight European
countries, showing that (omitting the stillborn) 124.71 boys to 100
girls die before the end of the first year, and that between the years
of 2 and 5 the proportion is 102.91 boys to 100 girls; or, about 25
per cent. excess of boys in the first year, and 3 per cent. in the
years between 1 and 5. In the intra-uterine period and at the very
threshold of life the mortality of males is still greater. The figures
of Wappaeus were 100 stillborn girls to 140.3 boys; Quetelet gave
the proportion as 100:133.5; and the statistics of fourteen European
countries during the years 1865-83 show that 130.2 bo