The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German EditionBloch, Iwan
Philosophy
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German Edition
Bloch, Iwan
Sex; Sexual ethics
On the other hand, =the development of fat= in woman is much greater
than in man. Bischoff investigated the relations between muscle and fat
in man and woman, and found that in the entire body in the male there
was 41·8 per cent. muscle and 18·2 per cent. fat; in the female 35·8 per
cent. muscle and 28·2 per cent. fat. In the female two regions of the
body are distinguished by a specially abundant deposit of fat, the
breast and the buttocks, whereby both parts receive the stamp of
extremely prominent secondary sexual characters. Upon this greater
deposit of fat depends the softer, more rounded form of the feminine
body; whilst the muscular system is less developed than in man. Man, on
the other hand, is especially powerful in the head, neck, breast, and
upper extremities. The contrast between the typical beauty of man and
woman, respectively, is mainly explicable by the differences just
enumerated.
Woman’s =skin= is clearer and more delicate than that of man.
More important is the fact that the blood of man contains a notably
larger quantity of =red blood-corpuscles= (erythrocytes) than that of
woman. Woman’s blood is richer in water. Welcker found in a cubic
millimetre of man’s blood 5,000,000, and in the same quantity of woman’s
blood 4,500,000 blood-discs. In correspondence with this, the hæmoglobin
content and the specific weight of woman’s blood are both less than
those of man’s. Since the red blood-corpuscles play a very important
part in the human economy as oxygen-carriers, this sexual difference in
the corpuscular richness of the blood is very important, and influences
to a high degree the bodily organization of both sexes.
=Larynx= and =voice= remain infantile in woman. Woman’s larynx is
notably smaller than man’s. After puberty woman’s voice is, on the
average, in the deep tones an octave, in the high tones two octaves,
higher than man’s.
According to the investigations of Pfitzner, the measurements of the
=head= (length, breadth, height, circumference) are smaller in woman
than in man. Woman’s skull remains, in respect of numerous
peculiarities of structure, strikingly like the skull of the child.[21]
This infantile quality of a woman’s skull, we must again point out,
justifies =no= conclusion regarding the inferiority of woman. Schultze,
when presenting these data for our consideration, rightly reminds us of
the well-known fact that the man of genius is also frequently
distinguished by infantile peculiarities.
Woman’s skull is absolutely smaller than man’s; hence, of course, her
brain is also absolutely smaller. Waldeyer gives as the mean weight of a
man’s brain 1,372 grammes (44·12 ounces), and of a woman’s brain, 1,231
grammes (39·58 ounces); Schwalbe’s figures are respectively 1,375
grammes (44·21 ounces) and 1,245 grammes (40·03 ounces).
In this connexion O. Schultze remarks:
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