WOMEN OUTLIVE MEN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5359, 3 December 1928, Page 4

WOMEN OUTLIVE MEN.

ENDOWED WITH MORE VITALITY.

VIEWS ADVANCED BY DOCTOR.

Women live longer than men because, in the first place, they are; women and Nature has endojwed) them with superior vitality. This advantage is born with them ; it is theirs before they are born (declares “An Eminent Doctor”).

Among babies still-born an undue, proportion are males; and among babies equally attacked by suc.h a general epidemic as summer, diarrhoea an undue proportion of boys die.

Almost as if to allow 'for the lower vitality of the male, and as -f she desired to have equal numbers of the sexes at maturity, Nature contrives that mere boy babies shall be born than girls, “in view of“ th© greater wastage which) is tc; be expected. These are fundamental questions of great difficulty and interest which we must recognise first in or.der to see the rest of the problems fairly.

But any may protest that I write nonsense if I assert that wcwien are stronger than men, since we all knc;w that they are not. As a matter of fact, I did not write “stronger,” for the word, is ambiguous. Men have bigger bones and muscles and can lift heavier weights, throw a cricket ball further, “smash” a tennis bajl harder, and sc, forth.

But to cp,nfound muscularity with vitality is a stupid error, though one very naturally encouraged by many men, for. sex-vanity’s sake, and by the teachers and practitioners 'of merely muscular systems of health.

Long ago I briefly summed up the facts : He bullies her, but buries him. Doubtless the reason why Nature thus endows woman with this power to recover is -her destiny for the rearing and nourishment o® children —tasks most arduous, far beyond anything demanded of man. Further, man shortens his life by habits often more dangerous than women’s. “Man does not die: he commits suicide.” Man smokes top much and (has a far higher death-rate from, cancer 'o'® the tongue, which has .to be set against the special risk off cancer run by woman. Man is more indulgent to himself —more apt to dig his gr» ve with his teeth).

Let us be fair and recognise that men’s occupations are often dangerous, whereas Women may be relatively safe at home ; but industrial hygiene is correcting that. The inferior standard of “physiological righteousness” of men’s conduct remains. Man was a hunter in oldlen days. He came; home hungry and tired, and his woman thus beheld him and proceeded to feed him. Nowadays, whenever a woman seps a man she still assumes that he is hungry and tired and feeds him, .though he has hunted nothing harder, to catch than the train or tram.

Certainly many women shorten lives on thq maxim “Feed the brute.” And) as the poop brute has in him not only much "ape and tiger,” but alsio a lot of donkey, he is content thus to be overfed, and soon brays Away his days.