The Weeper Sex

And as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping, as of a goose going barefoot.

--Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

After tests on 231 people, two ophthalmologists at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Drs. John W. Henderson and Wendell A. Prough, proved what everybody knew (or thought he knew) all along: once they start to cry, young women can weep more tears than young men.

Narrow strips of filter paper, folded near one end, were hooked in the 231 subjects' lower eyelids. After five minutes the length of the dampness on the paper outside the eye gave a measure of the individual's capacity for tears.

Girls and young women from 15 to 29 showed a normal flow of 20 mm. on the filter paper scale, the two doctors report in. the current Archives of Ophthalmology. Less than two-thirds of this flow (13 mm.) was normal for youths and young men from 16 to 29. The doctors squeezed out two more drops of information: from ages 30 to 60, men & women seem to have about the same capacity for tears; beyond 60, women seem to be slightly drier-eyed than men.

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