WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1639, 4 January 1913, Page 11

WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER

Though doctors "have long realised that, thanks to • a better knowledge of sanitation and personal hygiene, people are living- longer than formerly, the ranch greater relative longevity of women as shown in the recently published National Debt Office's report on the mortality: of Government life annuitants has oome as a general surprise. In a summary of these figures it was shown that the expectation of life.of a woman of 50 is now more than a year greater than it was in 1875, while that of a man of the 6ame ageis only three months greater. Discussing reasons of our increasing longevity and in particular woman-'s stronger hold on life, physicians at St. Hospital advanced widely .different theories. "The essential : cause of death," one stated, is a wearing out from overwork of ■ our brain cells. \Women may be just as brainy as men, but they do nob work'their brain cells as vigorously, or as continuously, as do their male rolatives.. If they did there would not be so great a disparity m.the length of life of the two sexes. Another consultant puts down woman's greater expectation of life to the more sheltered existence she -leads: and the lack of .the physically depressing competition, which is part of nearly :.eyery: man's life. ■■■ A woman'mav have hard work to do, he explained,"but.except for the few who work in offices or who follow professions they work in.their own homes and at a paw they.' set :f6r themselves. The home is also as a rule vastly more airy, sunny, and generally more wholesome than is her husband's shop or' office."