susceptible systems: much after-care being necessary in either case.

But the custom, of all other customs the one that is the most directly opposed to the dictates of nature, -that is at once the most unreasonable and the most dangerous,—is that of tight-lacing; I had almost said, that of wearing stays. Habit leads men to the most unnatural conclusions. Fashion and custom are the parents of absurdity. Much as we may laugh at the effects which these produce on other nations,much as we may ridicule the compressed, crippled, and useless feet of the Chinese females,-they do not interfere directly with any important or indispensable vital organ by the practice. Much as we may view, with an amused feeling of superiority, the blackened teeth, the skin painted with many colours and grotesque devices, and the be-ringed nose and lips of the savage, yet these are only what they purport to be; they are in their eyes ornamental; they do not interfere with the exercise of a single function; they do not even tend to disorder the health, injure the constitution, and curtail the, at best, short span of human life. I believe it to be far different with the European custom of wearing stays.

The natural respiration, when not interfered with by any such means, is chiefly accomplished by means of the diaphragm; the rise and fall of the abdomen is the effect produced by the respiratory process; and, unless during or immediately after active exertion, the chest is very little raised during respiration, or the ribs expanded by it. It will be found that females,

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In

encircled with the ordinary encasement of stiff and little-yielding stays, are obliged to respire almost exclusively by the expansion of the chest, and the raising of the ribs. The effect of this great interference with the mode of performing so constant and important a function, may well be to diminish the probability of its due discharge, and to risk the supervention of corresponding functional, and eventual organic disturbance, in the heart or the lungs,-and it may still more obviously and usually interfere with the due action of the stomach, the liver, and the bowels, by removing from them the agency of so much and such constant muscular movements, as the respiration by means of the abdominal muscles necessarily involves. many instances, in addition to this very sufficient cause of functional disturbance, the busk, or central bone, or steel, of the stays, presses on the stomach; and I have occasionally met with cases of gastric derangement that were evidently referable to this cause alone. The most important of the bad consequences of the use or abuse of stays to the well-being of the physique, remains to be mentioned. muscles of the spinal column being compressed by the stays, and their mobility being diminished by them, and their use and exercise being so far lessened or prevented, and the support of the back being no longer dependent exclusively on the exercise of these muscles, the consequence is, that they become smaller, more flaccid, and weaker; and any cause of further debility that may affect them, is attended with the risk of consequent deformity,-of spinal

The

irritation in the first instance, and spinal curvature in the end.

These, however, may be said to be effects that are more or less risked in all cases, by what may be considered to be the use of stays. Their abuse,—an abuse which female vanity, or maternal pride, is ever producing,-is followed by consequences that are still more immediately serious. The ribs, which form such elastic and yielding, yet such firm and protective walls to the thorax,-connected behind to the spine, and before to their cartilages,—the cartilages affording the means of attachment to the sternum, and increasing the elastic expansibility of the chest,-may be affected to almost any degree by outward pressure; the elasticity with which the walls of the chest have been endowed for wisest purposes, to afford the fullest protection against injury from without to the heart and the lungs, while the risk of any undue pressure, or undue resistance to the full exercise of their functions, was intended to be, as far as possible, obviated by these means; these very qualities are, by tight-lacing, converted into pregnant sources of evil. The ribs and their cartilages yield to the pressure, the outward form of the chest becomes completely altered; the deep and full and ample natural volume of the chest becomes permanently cramped and contracted, notwithstanding a marked effort that is made by the system to atone for the diminished space below, by causing the upper parts of the chest to become unduly expanded; and the respiration and the

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heart's action are so far interfered with, and phthisis or disease of the heart is the probable and the frequent result.

I am quite aware that all which could be written on this subject, might not be effectual in causing the use of stays to be discontinued: indeed habit may be said to have rendered them almost a necessary part of female dress. But, as a sort of "forlorn hope," I beg leave to offer the following suggestions:-Stays should not be worn, under any pretence or any circumstances whatever, until as late an age as possible; and certainly not before twelve or thirteen years old. The older the individual, the less soft and the firmer are both the ribs and their cartilages, and the less liable to be bent in a material degree by a moderate amount of pressure. Stays should, moreover, always be worn with as few, and as thin, and as yielding bones as possible, and with as elastic and yielding a busk as may be; and the stays should be always loosely laced. The larger evils which result from the use of stays will be avoided, if these suggestions are attended to; and the feelings or prejudices of society be sufficiently studied: women will not be seen without stays. Stays are in fact useless the spinal column wants no artificial or external support. The way to make it want support, is to support it; and in this way to weaken the muscles. The only possible end which the use of stays can serve, is to confine and give rigidity to the figure: an effect which might be sufficiently produced, without ungraceful stiffness, by a stout linen or cotton

under-garment, made to fit accurately to the body. By this, the figure might be sufficiently confined, and any justifiable pressure afforded; while the pressure would be equable, and would be at no point unyielding; while the muscles of the back would not be weakened by the provision of a useless support to the spine; while the natural abdominal respiration would not be interfered with; while the stomach would not be unduly pressed upon; while the ribs would not be deformed, nor the cavity of the chest be contracted.

I have made an appeal to reason and common sense; but habit and fashion are too firmly seated on their tyrant thrones, to give me ground for much hope that the appeal will be successful. Even if the understandings have been convinced, the trite old satire of the Latin poet may still be applicable :

I see the right, and I approve it too;

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.

OVID.-Tate's Translation.

It has been said in a former part of this chapter, that, when in bed, the skin usually throws off much more of its secretions than it does at other times: and this is the case, other things being equal, in direct proportion to the quantity of the bed-clothes, and the degree to which the bed-clothes and the bed are bad conductors of heat. It is not too much

to say, that many lives have been sacrificed to an inattention to, or an ignorance of, the great principle that, in this way, the bed and the bed-clothes exhaust materially the powers of the system. Everybody