Sensitiyeness to Pain

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 149, 14 June 1892, Page 4

Sensitiyeness to Pain

Prof Lambroso, the Italian savant who Recently v discovered " that all men of genius are mad, in maintaining in the current Fortnightly that woman does not feel anything nearly go much as man, writes: — "I have myself used Weber's sesthesiometre to measure the power of tact and sensitiveness to pain at the tip of the forefinger in over a hundred women ; and I have found that, except in tbe case of very youag girls, whose tactile sensitiveness is exceedingly developed, women's senee of touch is, in general, nearly twice as obtuse as that of men. Passing now to the question oi general sensibility, including sensitive-nee: s to pain : by experiments made with the electric algometer it is clearly shown that woman is inferior to man* Among no less than fifty women of the lower classes general sensibility was represented by 90 mm., and sensibility to pain by 52 mm. ; among? an equal number of men of the same condition the figures were respectively 94 mm. and 64 mm. In very young men general sensibility was 95 mm ; in young girls tbe figures were 91 mm] and 70 mm. and 70 mm." The professor adds : — From some of tbe principal surgeons io Europe I have elicited opinion amply confirming- me in the above conclusions concerning the manner in which women bear pain during the course of surgical operations effected under the same conditions of age and disease as in the case of an equal number of men. My conclusions are also borne out by a celebrated operation of Dr Billrdth's, who, when he determined upon making his great experiment of the excision of the pylorus, peformed it originally upon women, as being less sensitiye and better qualified to resist pain. By Carle I have been informed that the majority of women allow themselves to be operated upon with astonishing insensibility, almost as though the body beneath the surgeon's knife were that of another and not tbeir own. In fact, the male is after all, the Sensitive Sex.