men is sleeplessness,
a result, no doubt, of excessive katabolism."[70] Loss of sleep is
a strain which, like gestation, women are able to meet because of
their anabolic surplus. The fact that women undertake changes more
reluctantly than men, but adjust themselves to changed fortunes more
readily, is due to the same metabolic difference. Man has, in short,
become somatically a more specialized animal than woman, and feels
more keenly any disturbance of normal conditions, while he has not
the same physiological surplus as woman with which to meet the
disturbance.

Lower forms of life have the remarkable quality of restoring a lost
organ, and of living as separate individuals if divided. This power
gradually diminishes as we ascend the scale of life, and is lost by
the higher forms. It is a remarkable fact, however, that the lower
human races, the lower classes of society, women and children, show
something of the same quality in their superior tolerance of surgical
disease. The indifference of savage races to wounds and loss of
blood has everywhere been remarked by ethnologists. Dr. Bartels has
formulated the law of resistance to surgical and traumatic treatment
in the following sentence: "The higher the race, the less the
tolerance, and the lower the culture-condition in a given race, the
greater the tolerance."[71] The greater disvulnerability of women is
generally recognized by surgeons. The following figures from Lawrie,
Malgaigne, and Fenwick are representative:[72]

LAWRIE (GLASGOW)

==============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------
Pathological amputations...|110 cases| 29 || 41 cases| 7
Traumatic amputations......|106 " | 59 || 14 " | 4
|---------+------++---------+------
Total..................|216 cases| 88 || 55 cases| 11
|----------------++----------------
|or, 40.74 deaths|| 20 deaths
| per 100 || per 100
--------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 20.74 per cent. in favor of women.

MALGAIGNE (HOSPITALS OF PARIS)

==============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+---------+------++-------