Note (return) — ORGANIC DIFFERENCES IN THE SEXES

A census of the insane in Prussia in 1880 showed that 9,809 males and 7,827 females were born idiots. Koch's statistics of insanity show that in idiots there is almost always a majority of males, in the insane, a majority of females. But the majority of male idiots is so much greater than the majority of female insane that when idiots and insane are classed together there remains a majority of males.47 Insanity is, however, more frequently induced by external conditions, and less dependent on imperfect or arrested cerebral development. Mayr has shown from statistics of Bavaria that insanity is infrequent before the sixteenth year; and even before the twentieth year the number of insane is not considerable.48 In insanity the chances of recovery of the female are greater than those of the male, and mortality is higher among insane men than among insane women. There is practical agreement among pathologists on this point.49 Campbell points out in detail50 that the male sex is more liable than the female to gross lesions of the nervous system—a fact which he attributes to the greater variability of the male.