The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1888-08-28


Professor Sanford f. Challie, dean
of the medical faculty of Tulane Uni
versity, says that in most parts Of the
United States women have better eI-
pectation of life than men; they live
longer and survive with more tenacity
and success the vicissitudes that tend
to shorten Existence.
The Picdy'ne has heretofore dis
cussed as a possibility, in view of the
constantly increasing surplus of wo-
men over the numbers of men, that q
state of society analogous to that at
tributed to the Am IONS of antiquity
might again occur. Here learned
pbysiologist presents formidable
array of figures to show that in the
struggle of life the softer sex starts out
| with decided advantages of immunity
from the assaults of death as compared
with the males; that the women have
better chances for development in all
that makes up sane, sound and vigor-
Gus life. In word, the men are ON
the down grade of health and morals,
while the women possess all that con-
duce to their physical and moral super
iority. Let us quote the words of our
scientist:
The expectation of life for females
is in every locality better than for
males, but the difference in favor of
females varies greatly, and to an ex-
tent inexplicable by me. The SUPER
| iority of white females over males is
greatest, and very great in New Or
leans and Charleston; it is little in
Boston, Brooklyn and New York, and
it is very slight and least in New Jer-
sey and Massachusetts. The fourteen
localities take, in reference to this -
periority of females over males, the fol-
lowing order: New Orleans, Charles
ton, Cincinnati, San Francisco, St.
Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, District
| of Columbia, Baltimore, New York,
Brooklyn, Boston. Massachusetts,, New
Jersey.
Another singular fact is that while
there is slight superiority in
| Massachusetts OF the females over the
males, yet the males haye the superior
ity from to 10 years of age and that
this male superiority is found in no
other locality.
Why is all this possible Our author
replied
Females are, in less number, guilty
of vicious and hurtful excesses they
are more confined in the house and en-
| gagged in less hazardous occupations,
=, and thereby they are less exposed to
communicable diseases, to inclemencies
of weather and to dangerous accidents.
But these obvious causes, while ex-
planning in part, fail to do 30 in whole.
| For at no time is the superiority of
| females as great as under years of
age, and such females are no more ex.
posed than males to the above causes.
For such reasons, vital statisticans
have claimed that nature endowed the
female with stronger vitality, with
greater vial endurance, and if there be
| better explanation | do not know it.
! We are to believe, then, that while
women are, in obedience to subtle
forces of evolution, growing physical.
ly more perfect, aud this would seem
also to include advancement toward
moral perfection, the men are declin-
ing in all vital characteristics The
women are growing constantly more
beautiful and more numerous, while
the men are in corresponding ratio to
retire from the world they have for so
many ages dominated and controlled.
By these mysterious potential agencies
the men are dying, fading out of exis-
tence, and their last despairing gaze is
to be fixed on race of goddesses,
''divinely tall and most divinely fair
crowding upon the stage where the
tremendous tragedy of "Man and
Woman" has been so long enacted,
but now to be Superseded by the in
expressibly peculiar and unknownable
drama, "Woman.
1t is to this ending that all The mus
ty figures and dry bones of science
presented above inevitably tend 1t is
The consummation OF an implacable law
which is destiny, declaring the survival
of the fittest 1t portends a grand fu-
ture for woman, but it is much to be
douted if Eve can be happy in Para
disc without Adam.