eep grief.

This is a well-known law, which in the case of the female
criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her
longevity and the toughness with which she endures the
hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... I
know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the
age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29
without any grave injury to health.[91]

Woman's resistance to death is thus more marked at the two extremes
of life, infancy and old age, the periods in which her anabolism is
uninterrupted. Menstruation, reproduction, and lactation are at once
the cause of an anabolic surplus and the means of getting rid of it.
At the extremes of life no demand of this kind is made on woman,
and her anabolic nature expresses itself at these times in greater
resistance.

Dr. Lloyd Jones has determined that between 17 and 45 years of age the
specific gravity of the blood of women is lower than that of men. In
old women the specific gravity rises above that of old men, and he
suggests that their greater longevity is due to this.[92] No doubt
the greater longevity of women is to be associated with the rise
in specific gravity of their blood, but this rise in the specific
gravity of women after 45 years is consequent upon their anabolic
constitution. High specific gravity in general is associated with
abundant and rich nutrition; it falls in women during pregnancy,
lactation, and menstruation, and when these functions cease it is
natural that the constructive metabolic tendency on which they are
dependent should show itself in a heightened specific gravity of the
blood (i.e., greater richness), and in consequence greater longevity.

Some facts in the brain development of women point to the same
conclusion. The growth of the brain is relatively more rapid in
women than in men before the twentieth year. Between 15 and 20 it has
reached its maximum, and from that time there is a gradual decline in
weight until about the fiftieth year, when there is an acceleration
of growth, followed by a renewed diminution after the sixtieth year.
The maximum of brain weight is almost reached by men at 20 years,
but there is a slow increase until 30 or 35 years. There is then a
diminution until the fiftieth year, followed by an acceleration, and
at 60 years again a rapid diminution in weight; but the acceleration
is more marked and the final diminution less marked in wo