56 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
will stand it in good stead, is indicated by the results of the weighing of children communicated by Winckel to the Gynaeco- logical Society of Berlin in 1862. Winckel weighed 100 new- born children, 56 boys and 44 girls, showing that birth was uniformly followed by a loss of weight. The average diminution was about 108 grams the first day, and but little less the second day. At the end of five days the loss was 220 grams, six- sevenths of which occurred during the first two days. 1 The tendency to decreased vitality in girls after maturity and before marriage just referred to must be associated with the katabolic changes implied in menstruation and the newness to the system of this destructive phase of metabolism.
We should expect the death rate of men to run high during the period of manhood in consequence of their greater exposure to peril, hardship, and the storm and stress of life. But two tendencies operate to reduce the comparative mortality of men between the twentieth and about the fortieth year : the fact of the severe male mortality in infancy which has removed the constitutionally weak contingent, and the fact that during this period women are subject to death in connection with child- birth. So that in the prime of life the mortality of males does not markedly exceed that of females. But the statistics of lon- gevity show that with the approach of old age the number of women of a given age surviving is in excess of the men, and that their relative tenacity of life increases with increasing years. Ornstein has shown, from the official statistics of Greece from 1878-1883, that in every period of five years between the ages of 85 and 1 10 years and upwards a larger number of women sur- vive than of men, and in the following proportion :
Years Men Women
85- 90, 1296 1347
90- 95, - 700 820
95-100, 305 370
100-105, - 116 168
105-110, 52 69
1 10 and over, 20 34
X DEPAUL, art. "Nouveau-N," Diet, encyc.des sciences mtdicales.
