Page:HealtBeautyMadameCaplin - 62.png

62 of the figure is now employed in the accumulation of adipose matter beneath the cuticle. When, however, the overtaxed membrane gives way, the tissues relax, and the muscular fibres losing their tenacity, fail to maintain their normal position. Then is the time to aid Nature by the judicious application of another layer of muscles, which shall support the former in the performance of their functions. It is not mere pressure that is demanded, for this will too frequently increase the evil, and it often happens that middle age is burdened with in­firmities in consequence of the compression to which the waist has been subject in youth; and hence that enormous distension of the abdomen with which some females are troubled. The uterus and other internal organs will, from sympathy, be affected also, and this will give rise to numerous painful disorders in the region of the pelvis. But we have already spoken of the evil of tight-lacing, and need not recur to it again here; we appeal to the experience of every lady who may read this, whether much that we have said has not fallen under her own observation. The extreme disfigurement to which the human body is liable may be seen by a reference to certain nations and races, in whom the deformity is great; and although the picture is rather calculated to inspire disgust than any other feeling, still it is well to exhibit it as an advertisement of how far the frame may be mutilated through ignorance or misconception.

Having stated the fact, that women need support at particular periods of life, and given the reason why it is so, we may attribute to this cause the common practice of seeking, by the use of stays, to sustain the figure. Before the introduction of cloth amongst them, the American Indians used the fine bark of the white birch-tree for the purpose, enveloping the body in it. Now they use narrow bands of calico, which being wound round and round the body, in imitation of the manner in which a bandage is applied by surgeons to a swollen limb, they in this way compress and sustain the abdomen. If it be asked why those poor mothers of the wild woods-men have adopted this custom, it will be found in the want of Nature, which has spoken through their organ­ization, and demanded support. And where this aid is not rendered, women become proverbially ugly in middle life, as is the case with many of the African and Asiatic races, whose breasts hang down to an inordinate length, and whose bodies become deformed and decrepit at