HEAT AND LASSITUDE

Evening Star, Issue 20688, 10 January 1931, Page 8

HEAT AND LASSITUDE

MEN SUFFER MOST FEMALES’ SUPERIORITY. During tho recent heat wave in New York and over a period of_ scientific research, the Carnegie Institute discovered that women stood high temperatures better than men. Dr Oscar Kiddle, who conducted its research, found that high temperatures slowed down male metabolism more than female. Metabolism is the production of energy. Ordinarily, from youth to old age, male metabolism produces more energy than female, so the Carnegie discovery means that the male loses his margin of energy superiority when the temperature soars. 'At 68deg males showed an energy production of 3.861 calories; the females 3,749. When the temperature was 86deg the male calory production dropped to 2,777: the female dropped only to 3,898. Tho decrease was 28.1 per cent, for the males and 20.3 for the females. . . Dr Riddle says the male, including man, has more red blood cells than the female, and more of the red pigment that gives colour to the blood. This pigment, luomogobin, is tho stuff that picks up oxygen in the lungs and carries it right through tho body. In ring doves and pigeons the excess of red pigment of male is 7 to 9 per cent. “ Upon and around such general conditions,” says Dr Riddle, “as higher level of tissue oxidations (use of oxygen) in tho male, differential sex response to temperature, and extra hremoglobin in the male blood are suspended tho vital functional levels of most or all tho parts of tho organism. “These aro the things that most directly determine the muscular And all other effort expended in respiration, the work of the circulatory organs tho regulation of heat loss, together with tho level and degroe of.nerve action thus involved; directly tune work, secretory flow, and secretory output. “They are thus deeply vital, internal, and functional things. They operate -and persist during all stages of life. They are the various facets of basic metabolic difference—each stage of which is easily identifiable and measureablo also as a sex difference. They constitute tho primary sex difference.