In the United States of America and in the English colonies (as in foreign countries generally) there is an excess of male lunatics. The statistics for the United States are still very imperfect, but in Pennsylvania, where they receive most atten- tion, the excess is very clear; thus, during 1889, an average year, there were 1017 admissions of men to 836 of women. In New South Wales the number of insane persons on the official registers at the end of the year 1890 was 1906 men and n 96 women. At the Cape, at the same time, the European and coloured inmates of the asylums numbered 335 men and 240 women, the excess of men being nearly as well marked among the white as among the black population.
The study of sexual differences in the causes of insanity is not very satisfactory. Alcoholic excess (which, however, needs further analysis) is usually 1 Art. " Statistics of Insanity," by Dr. Hack Tuke, DicU of Psych. Med.
M.
F.
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both in England and France set down as the chief cause in men, followed by sexual excess and pecuniary troubles; while in women, love, pecuniary troubles, domestic misfortunes, religion, and jealousy are usually set down as the chief causes.
During the ten years 1878-87, 136,478 persons (66,918 men and 69,560 women) were admitted into all classes of asylums in England and Wales. If we consider the causes of their insanity, the proportion per cent to total number admitted during the ten years was stated to be as follows: — Male.
Female.
Alcoholic intemperance Various bodily diseases and disorders Domestic troubles (including loss of rela- tions and friends).
Adverse circumstances (including business anxieties and pecuniary difficulties) Parturition and the puerperal state.
Mental anxiety, " worry," and over-work Accident or injury Religious excitement.
Love affairs (including seduction) Fright and nervous shock.
Sexual intemperance.
Venereal disease Self-abuse (sexual) Pregnancy Lactation Uterine and ovarian disorders.
Puberty Change of life...Fevers...Privation and starvation.
Old age...Other ascertained causes existed in And the causes were unknown in There had been previous attacks in Hereditary influence was ascertained in Congenital defect was ascertained in.
On the whole, it may be said that causes acting on the brain are more common in men; moral and emotional causes are more common in women; excesses, both intellectual and sensual, are more common causes in men.
If we turn to consider sexual variations in the incidence of different forms of insanity, somewhat more reliable results are obtained, but we meet with the difficulty that the nomenclature is not yet uniform. Taking the admissions for this country for one year (1889), the proportions per cent were divided as follows between the forms of mental disorder recognised by the Lunacy Board: — Male.
Female.
Mania Melancholia Congenital insanity (including idiocy and other mental defects from birth or infancy) Other forms of insanity.
47 IOO Gamier 1 gives the following result of his experiences at the Paris Prefecture de Police as to the relative frequency of various types of insanity in men and women during the years 1886-88. He adopts Mag- nan's classification, and is dealing with 8139 persons (4831 men and 3308 women). I have arranged them in the order of frequency for both sexes, and reduced the figures to percentages. In making any com* parison with the English figures it must be re- membered that we are here dealing with an urban population.
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Male.
Female.
Alcoholism (acute, sub-acute chronic) Mental degeneration (idiocy, imbecility, psychic debility, hereditary degeneration) General paralysis Intellectual enfeeblement (due to haemor- rhage, softening, or tumour) Melancholia Mania Epilepsy Senile dementia Progressive systematic insanity, or para- noia, 37 97 States of exaltation, speaking generally, belong to early age; " mental exaltation," as Clouston remarks, " is perfectly natural in childhood It is, in fact, the physiological state of brain at that period;" states of depression belong to a somewhat more advanced age, when mania is extremely rare. Among negroes, also, manias are largely in excess of other forms of insanity. 1 It seems to be generally agreed that, as shown in the tables already given, mania is more common in women than in men. Mendel finds that out of over 800 patients 5.2 of the males are maniacal, 9.6 per cent, of the females, or nearly double. 2 In its most extreme form, also, — acute delirious mania, — it is more common in women, and in women at the same time there is better hope of recovery. 8 While mania is more common in women than in men, melancholia is even, relatively, more common in women. It is worthy of note that while mania is an insanity of the young, the uncivilised, and the 1 Winter, " Insanity in the Coloured Race," Alienist and Neurologist \ ' Mendel, Die Afanie, Wien, 1881, p. 141. 9 R. Percy Smith, Art "Acute Delirious Mania," Diet, of Psych.
Med.
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savage, melancholia is an insanity of the adult and civilised. " To get a fine type of melancholia," says Clouston, "you must get an educated brain." Among the educated, he remarks, there are more cases of melancholia, of "monomania," of paralysis of will power, oifolie circulaire. It is remarkable that these typical examples of the insanities of the educated are all more common in women than in men. The greater prevalence of melancholia and of systematised delusional insanity (formerly called "monomania," and now more frequently called " paranoia ") may be seen in the tables already given; paralysis of will- power, in its chief form, for example, which is called folie du doute, is also more common in women, and circular insanity is found (according to Jules Falret) in the proportion of about one man to four or five women. On the other hand, the graver and more incurable forms of insanity, which chiefly prevail among paupers, such as epileptic insanity, are much more frequent in men. We must not, how- ever, generalise too hastily from these facts.
The forms of insanity which are now most rapidly increasing amongst women are those which have hitherto been more especially predominant in men — alcoholic insanity and general paralysis. Inebriety, as is now happily beginning to be recognised, is some- thing more than a mere taste for drink: it is in a large number of cases the sign of a deep-rooted disorder of the nervous centres. Inebriety is not only an increasing cause of insanity among women, it is in great part responsible for the increase of recidivism among women criminals in various countries. In Paris, as Gamier has shown, alcoholic insanity among women has more than doubled in fifteen years; though, it must be added, the rate of increase in men is very little less.
General paralysis has been called the maladie du sikcle. It is the disease of excess, of vice, of over- work, of prolonged worry; it is especially the disease of great Google MORBID PSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 347 urban centres, and its appearance usually seems to show that the organism has entered on a competitive race for which it is not fully equipped. But it is con- fined to no social class, nor to any stage of intellect; it is common among paupers, and it finds typical repre- sentatives in a Baudelaire and a Guy de Maupassant It is rare in Norway; it is rare among the sedate Arabs, and rare among lower races generally; it is very rare among priests and monks, also among Quakers. General paralysis was formerly rare among women. Now, in all the great centres of civilisation, in England, in the United States, in France, in Germany, it is, by the evidence of nearly all com- petent observers, increasing at a rapid rate among both sexes, but with especial rapidity among women, although it cannot yet be said to be common among women.
Its increase among men in England, and its proportionately still greater increase among women, has been noted by many alienists; and Savage remarks that it is specially apt to occur among middle-class women who are taking the places of men. In Germany the growing proportion of women among general paralytics has been noted by Mendel, Sander, and others; the proportion was formerly 1 woman to 5 men; it is now 1 to 3. Siemerling, who does not consider that the statistics of the Charity, in Berlin, show any real increase of general paralysis in women, admits it for men; he finds a sexual difference in the symptoms, which are on the whole quieter in women, with a tendency to delusions, often of a sexual character. In France the increase of general paralysis in both sexes is well marked. Lunier and Dumesnil pointed out its in- crease among women in the asylums of the Seine between 1864 and 1874. Gamier finds that in Paris it has nearly doubled in men during fifteen years, and in women considerably more than doubled during the same period; so that there is 1 woman to 2 J men.
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We may regard general paralysis as a typically masculine disease, and it is therefore of some interest from our present point of view to analyse it more minutely. It is fundamentally a gradual disorder and paralysis of the finer movements of the muscular system and a blunting of the senses, coming on at first imperceptibly, or only betrayed to observation by a peculiar slow tremulousness of speech. There is some resemblance to an early stage of drunkenness. Concomitantly with the slight paralytic symptoms appear equally slight emotional and intel- lectual disorders; there is a general coarsening and exaggera- tion of the thoughts, feelings, and conduct, corresponding to the lack of sensory and motor delicacy of discrimination, and at first there is often great over-activity, associated with, and due to, loss of control. There are very frequently ideas of grandeur, and Baudelaire's muse, as described by Swinburne, with " deep division of prodigious breasts," is the characteristic goddess of the general paralytic.
General paralytics, and those who are predisposed to general paralysis, seem to have to a certain extent a general common character. This has been admirably described in detail by Dr. G. R. Wilson, whose account, which is instructive from our present point of view, I will here summarise (Journal Mental Science, January 1892.)
They often belong to large families, and not infrequently one or both parents have lived rather too freely. At school they are usually fairly active and intelligent, and are apt to leave early and to show considerable determination and ambition in choos- ing a career which they very often change, for they are of rest- less spirit and they cannot stand the humdrum life of the country; they usually rush to the towns. What the occupation is makes very little difference; "he will live like a general paralytic whether he be a mason's labourer or a barrister." It cannot be said that they show any uniformity in physical type; that is a matter of race; but they possess certain general physical characters. "As a rule they are well-nourished, and not of a neurotic, phthisical, or otherwise delicate appearance. On the contrary, they are spoken of as men of • strong constitu- tions/ full-blooded and vigorous, well-favoured men. In short, they are good animals." They have good nerve and great power of endurance. But they are not generally athletic; they usually eschew all kinds of sports, and seldom possess the play- instinct.
" An inquiry into the life-history of these men brings out an important and almost constant characteristic. Their view of life is rarely, if ever, that of men commonly called * good. 1 It is essentially a selfish, non-moral view. They are described as men who 'would do nobody a bad turn,' 'kind-hearted,' 'generous,' ' hard-working,' sometimes even 'conscientious.'
Google MORBID PSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 349 But none of the men whose history I have got have been men with any religious interests or of any great moral ambition. The characteristic general paralytic is a man with a large belief in himself, restless, ambitious, and with a relentless desire for the good things of this life." He is sociable, and is often brilliant in society; anxious for the world's good opinion; and his fits of depression or of quick temper are soon over. Unusually strong sexual impulses are among the fundamental characteristics of these patients, and often bring them into trouble; this characteristic seems also to lead to a considerable degree of resemblance in the wives they select. Dr. Savage says he has been struck by "the frequency of the occurrence of general paralysis in the husbands of some women of voluptuous physique," and Dr. Wilson remarks that it is frequently possible to pick out the general paralytic's wife in the visitors' room.
"Such, in the rough," Dr. Wilson concludes, "are the fundamental characteristics frequently, though by no means invariably, associated in the victims of general paralysis. Regarded as a whole, the type is characteristic as much in what it lacks as in what it possesses. General intelligence and common-sense, ambition and energy, sociability and a large capacity for enjoyment, a firm belief in one's self, and a preference for handsome women, are all eminently sane characteristics according to our present standard. On the other hand, some admirable qualities are notably wanting — qualities which make for a higher control to temper the tend- ency to excess, the selfishness, and the restlessness. I can- not refrain from mentioning Mr. R. L. Stevenson's beautifully drawn character of * Will of the Mill ' as a typical contrast to these restless general paralytics, exhibiting some of their characteristics, and many more besides which they conspicu- ously lack.* It is worth while to compare this masculine insanity with the description of neurasthenia (p. 279), a disorder which is typically feminine.
It would be quite possible to take in detail the diseases of the brain and spinal cord generally, and to discuss their sexual incidence. I refrain from doing so, because although the difference in sexual incidence is often very marked, its significance can- not be said to be clear in detail. On the whole, the more serious diseases which produce very gross lesions of the nervous centres are more common in men; the slighter and so-called " functional " dis- orders are more common in women. For this Google 350 MAN AND WOMAN.
reason insanity and nervous diseases generally are much more fatal in men; women tend to recover easily, although they may again relapse. These facts are connected with a general sexual difference which we have met with already and shall meet with again.
On the whole, we see that while, as a rule, men are more liable to insanity than women, there is a tendency for women to come into rank with men in this respect, and in England at the present time they have even surpassed men. This increase may be compared with the varying frequency of criminality among women. Roughly speaking, both tend to go together, and to reach a maximum in the restless industrial centres of civilisation; everywhere insanity and criminality follow in the wake of progress and prosperity, though insanity is probably a more certain and well-marked sign of the tension of civilisation than criminality. In France they are both on the increase, but the upward curve of both, so far as women are concerned, has been less well marked during the last few years. In Italy, where there is little crime among women, male lunatics greatly preponderate over female. Even a century ago the greater tendency of urban life to produce insanity in women could be traced in England. This increased tendency to insanity and to criminality is a tax — at the present moment unduly heavy — which women pay for the privilege of taking part in our civilisation. If English women are to be as free from insanity as Italian women, and as free from crime as Greek women, they must be content to take a back place in the forward movement If at present there is a tendency for women to suffer to an undue extent, this is owing to external obstacles which will probably disappear. The present evil is that while obtaining their share of work women are not at the same time acquiring an adequate control of that work, and of the conditions under which it is carried out They are forced to carry it out under conditions which were Google MORBID TSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 351 made for men by men, or — little, if at all, better — by men for women. Hence women are subjected to an undue stress. What we see here is not the result of work upon women, but the result of work under unwholesome and unnatural conditions which they have not themselves controlled. It has been repeatedly shown that the four chief evils from which the workers of to-day suffer — long hours, low wages, irregular employment, insanitary conditions — in every case press more heavily on women; apart from the fact that, as childbearers, women workers are already handicapped. The indications of this barometer of insanity need not therefore be received with undue alarm. They are merely the outcome of the stress of imperfect adjustment to new conditions, warning us that certain readjustments are necessary.
CRIMINALITY.
CRIMINALITY.
I do not propose to give more than a glance at the question of sexual differences in criminality. I have elsewhere said whatever I have to say on the general question, inclusive of feminine criminality. 1 More- over, during the last few years the sexual relations of criminality have been studied in various countries so thoroughly, and from so many different points of view, that it is difficult either to bring any new contribution to the subject, or to present it more clearly. The most recent work on criminality in women, that of Lombroso and Ferrero, is the largest and most important of all, although it is not greatly concerned with statistical sexual comparisons. 2 1 H. Ellis, Tke Criminal, 1890; see especially pp. 214-221.
2 Lombroso e Ferrero, La Donna Delinquent e> la Prostituta e la Donna Normale, Turin and Rome, 1893. Among numerous studies of a statistical, criminological, and psychological character may be mentioned a chapter on "Sex, Age, and Crime" in W. D. Morrison's excellent little book, Crime and its Causes, 189 1; various portions of Proal's elaborate work, Le Crime et la Peine, Paris, 1892; an interesting chapter on " La Criminalite Feminine " in Jol/s Le Crime, 1888; Dr.
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It must also be added that the study of the sexual differences in criminality is very complicated and fallacious, much more so than in the case of suicide, or even in the case of insanity, which is at all events recognised by all as within the scientific province. Laws vary so greatly, the severity with which they are upheld is so uncertain a quantity, judicial and police proceedings are so unreliable, police statistics often so peculiar, that our conclusions would be doubtful, even if we were sure that the criminal was caught, that he was indeed the culprit, and the sole culprit This also we can by no means be sure of, and there can be no doubt that our ignorance often shields women who, although in the background, have either morally shared the responsibility for the crime, or have assisted in a subordinate capacity.
Whatever deductions, however, have to be made, and however great may be the difficulties in arriving at precisely accurate results, there can scarcely be doubt that the criminal and anti-social impulse is less strong in women than in men. In Europe generally the crimes committed by women, accord- ing to Hausner, who has made a special study of the subject, are 16 per cent, of all crimes. We should be inclined to suspect this, in the absence of definite facts, from what we know of the nature of womea Not only are women by their maternal functions more organically tied to the social relations of life, but their affectability renders an anti-social and unusual course of life much more organically Nacke of Hubertusberg on " Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe " and " Die anthropologisch-biologischen Beziehungen zum Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe," Zeitsckrift fur Psychiairie, 1892-93; De Ryckere, " La Criminality Feminine," Belgique Judiciaire^ 189 1; Roncoroni, " Influenza del Sesso sulla Criminalita in Italia," ArcAiz/io di PsicAiatria, vol. xiv., Fasc i.; also A. Bosco's very careful and able statistical study, Studio delta Delinquenza, Rome, 1892. Ron- coroni has recently published a convenient summary of the main inter- national statistical facts regarding sexual differences in criminality, " La Criminalita Femminile all' Estero," Archivio di Psichiatria^ vol. xiv. s Fasc. ii.-iii.
Google MORBID PSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 353 difficult. Their physiological timidity — for, as we have seen, the timidity of women has a neuro- muscular basis — makes the impulse to crime more difficult even by the very vaso-motor perturbation the impulse produces. The impulse is expended in emotion before it becomes a deed. The abnormal woman has much greater encouragement to become a prostitute, an occupation which is only incidentally connected with crime, and which is not viewed with the same unmitigated reprobation. It happens in this matter, as in many others, that women are protected by a quality which has its defects; it makes the attainment of criminality difficult for them by also making difficult the attainment of other forms of abnormal energy which are more highly esteemed. The forms of criminality into which women most easily fall are the subtlest (like poisoning) and also the more domestic forms. Murders, assaults, burglaries, thefts, commercial crimes — as well as the so-called political crimes — are comparatively rare among women. In Italy, for 100 men who commit any one of these offences the proportion of women is from six to below one.
Poisoning, on the other hand, is a characteristically feminine criminal method. In Greek days Euripides makes Medea say that poison is the way of murder in which women excel, and they have retained that pre-eminence ever since. 1 In France the proportion is about six women to three or four men; so that about two-thirds of detected cases of poisoning are by women. In Italy, for every 100 men found guilty of poisoning there are 123 women. Infanticide is the crime in which women stand out in greatest contrast to men; in Italy, for example, for every 100 men guilty of infanticide there are 477 women. This must be so; immense social pressure is put on a woman to induce her to destroy or abandon the infant which all 1 On the frequency of poisoning among women in lower races, see Lombroso and Ferrero, La Donna Delinquente, pp. 208-210.
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her natural instincts prompt her to cherish; and the man who commits this crime is usually doing it for the sake of a woman. Women, as Quetelet long since remarked, are domestic criminals; this is simply because the home occupies so large a field in their life generally; even against their own children, and apart from infanticide, mothers commit crimes some- what more frequently than fathers. This has, for instance, been the experience of the Society for the Protection of Children, which in one year (1891) ob- tained convictions against 347 fathers and 356 mothers. The crimes of women are usually more marked by cruelty than those of men. Bosco has pointed out that women are relatively more often guilty of aggravated than of simple homicide, and that this is a general fact, which can be demonstrated in England as well as in Italy, in Spain as in Germany, in France as in Hungary. De Ryckere, writing as a magistrate, says in his study of feminine criminality that the crimes of women tend to take on characters that are " more cynical, more cruel, more brutal, more depraved, and more terrible than those of men." 1 It must be said that beside this element of cruelty in women, which is perhaps founded on diminished sensibility as well as increased affectability, we have the element of com- passion which is founded on the maternal instinct In most respects, physical and psychic, as we have had occasion to see, women are more precocious than men. It is not so in respect of criminality. While in men the maximum is attained usually about the twentieth year or soon after, in women it is not usually attained until the thirtieth year or soon after. This to some extent explains the fact, which has often been pointed out, that more women criminals are married than men criminals. It is not so much that marriage acts as an incentive to crime in women — though it certainly opens out to them the domestic field in which their 1 Ferrero has an interesting chapter on the cruelty of women; Lombroso and Ferrero, La Donna Delinquent e t pp. 67-78.
Google MORBID PSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 355 criminality is by preference displayed — as that their criminality attains its maximum at a period when more persons of both sexes are married. It would be instructive to unravel the causes of this later development of criminality in women, but it is not easy to do so at present To some extent the apparent increase of crime in women as age increases is due to the simple fact that in the advanced periods of life women are in a decided majority. Recidivism, it may be added, is in most countries distinctly less marked in women that in men. In France, for example (1876-80), 53 per cent of male committals were of recidivists, but only 21 per cent of the female committals. In Germany, twenty years ago, recidivism was also more common in men, but there has been a gradual change, and now it is at least as common in women. In drunkenness, as Kerr points out, recidivism is commoner in women than in men, and it is probable that the tendency to the increase of recidivism among women is largely due to the increase of drunkenness. In Great Britain, there seems to be little doubt, drunkenness is increasing among women, and this fact is clearly mirrored in the police records of London, Glasgow, and other large cities.
Even to a greater extent than in suicide or in insanity, there is a social factor in criminality, and it is determined very largely by the differences between town and country. Towns modify the nature of crimes; thus the women who commit infanticide in the country practise abortion in towns. This influence is still more marked in increasing the total amount of crime. This is especially so where we find women working in factories, and, above all, working for low wages and without any organisation. It is largely to this cause, doubtless, that, so far as women are concerned, Scotland occupies the position of being (except some parts of Germany) the most criminal country in Google 356 MAN AND WOMAN.
Europe. The bad record of Glasgow, for instance, as regards feminine criminality is notorious. In Glasgow (notwithstanding its municipal energy in many directions) women workers are ill organised, and are only able to earn half as much as the women workers of Lancashire in the same industries. If we turn to the United States we find, as Dr. F. H. Wines, the chief American authority on criminal statistics, has recently shown, that there is a remarkable preponderance of feminine criminality in the North Atlantic group of States as compared with the rest of the country. Taking the white population only, it is found that in the nine States comprised in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, the number of female prisoners is 12 per cent, of the total; in the remaining thirty-five States they furnish only 4 per cent. The only explanation seems to be that the North Atlantic corner of the country is the oldest and most highly civilised; it is the region of cities and of factories, employ- ing immense numbers of women, who in the rest of the country are more home-living. If we take Europe generally we find that feminine crimin- ality is very high in Scotland, and generally in Germany; high also in England and Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Norway; somewhat lower in Ireland and France and Italy and Austria; very low in Russia and Spain, and probably reaching a minimum in Greece. It will be seen that the ener- getic, independent, industrial Teutonic races stand clearly at the head as regards feminine criminality, Belgium ranking with them because, though in a slighter degree Teutonic, it is a land of large towns and of factory industries. Russia and Spain, on the other hand, are the two great predominantly agricultural countries of Europe, having in this, as in some other respects, much in common; in Greece women may almost be said to have no activities outside their homes. We have clearly to recognise Google MORBID PSYCHIC PHENOMENA- 357 that the tendencies of modern life are developing the criminality of women, notwithstanding that the organic tendencies of woman's nature restrain her to a considerable extent from the commission of crime. There is, however, nothing fatal in these tendencies of modern life, and, in a very large degree, they are assuredly within our control.
Google CHAPTER XVI.
THE VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN.
MOST ABNORMALITIES MORE COMMON IN MEN THE IN- FLUENCE OF THE PELVIS ON THE SIDE OF MEDIOCRITY — STILL-BORN CHILDREN — SEXUAL PROPORTION OF CONGENITAL MALFORMATIONS — MUSCULAR ABNORMAL- ITIES — THE EAR AND ITS ABNORMALITIES — PSYCHIC ABNORMALITIES, IDIOCY, GENIUS, ETC. — GREATER VARIABILITY OF THE MALE BRAIN — THE PRIMITIVE RACIAL ELEMENTS IN A POPULATION PERHAPS MORE CLEARLY REPRESENTED BY WOMEN — WOMEN MORE DISPOSED THAN MEN TO PRESERVE ANCIENT CUSTOM AND ANCIENT METHODS OF THOUGHT — THE ORGANIC CONSERVATISM OF WOMEN — NO CONNECTION WITH POLITICS — ADVANTAGES OF THIS SEXUAL DIFFERENCE.
BOTH the physical and the mental characters of men show wider limits of variation than do the physical and mental characters of women. Monsters are more often male than female. If we take at random one hundred men and one hundred women, we shall usually find that the women more closely re- semble each other than the men. Abnormal variations of nearly all kinds are more frequent in men than in women.
It was, however, at one time supposed that women are more variable and more liable to exhibit congenital malformations. This was, for instance, the opinion of Meckel, simply on the ground that women being inferior to men must necessarily show more frequently what were considered to be signs of inferiority. That Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 359