ys were stillborn
to every 100 girls.[84] So that, while more boys than girls are
born living, still more are born dead. That this astonishingly high
mortality is due in part to the somewhat larger size of boys at
birth and the narrowness of the maternal pelvis is indicated by the
statement of Collins, of the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital, Dublin, that
within half an hour after birth only 1 female died to 16 males; within
the first hour 2 females to 19 males; and within the first 6 hours, 7
females to 29 males.[85] But that this explanation is not sufficient
is shown by the fact that a high mortality of boys extends through
the whole of the first year, and through five years, in a diminishing
ratio, and also that the tenacity of woman on life, as will be shown
immediately, is greater at every age than man's except during a period
of about five years following puberty. "There must be," says Ploss,
"some cause which operates more energetically in the removal of
male than of female children just before and after birth;"[86] but,
besides the more violent movement of boys and their greater size,
no explanation of the cause has been advanced more acceptably than
Haushofer's teleological one, quoted by Ploss, that Nature wished to
make a more perfect being of man and therefore threw more obstacles
in his way. A satisfactory explanation is found if we regard the young
female as more anabolic, and more quiescent, with a stored surplus of
nutriment by which in the helpless and critical period of change from
intra- to extra-uterine conditions it is able to get its adjustment to
life. The constructive phase of metabolism has prevailed in them even
during fetal life. That there is need of a surplus of nutrition in
the child at birth, or that a surplus will stand it in good stead,
is indicated by the results of the weighing of children communicated
by Winckel to the Gynaecological Society in Berlin in 1862. Winckel
weighed 100 new-born children, 56 boys and 44 girls, showing that
birth was uniformly followed by a loss of weight. The average
diminution was about 108 grams the first day, and but little less
the second day. At the end of five days the loss was 220 grams,
six-sevenths of which occurred during the first two days.[87] The
tendency to decreased vitality in girls after maturity and before
marriage, just referred to, must be associated with the katabolic
changes implied in menstruation and the newness to the system of this
destru