Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/171

 *mity," or "the lower limb." The bones of this extremity are differently arranged in woman and in man. One of the consequences of this is that no woman can run gracefully. They run, says a witty Frenchman, as if they intended to be overtaken.

The knee should be midway between the lower line of the body and the ground. Below the knee the calf should rise rapidly, full and round, and taper gently to a slender ankle.

A handsome leg is a rarity, we had almost said an impossibility, among American women. The reason of this is the place where they wear their garters. No Frenchwoman, no Englishwoman of cultivation, now-a-days wears her garter below the knee. It is ruinous to the shape of the calf. More than this, it has serious consequences of another kind. The principal vein of the leg (vena saphena brevis) runs just beneath the skin until it nearly reaches the knee, when it sinks between the muscles. Now if this is constricted at its largest part by a tight garter, the blood is checked in its return to the heart, the feet are easily chilled, and more liable to disease, the other veins of the leg are swollen into hard, blue knots, become varicose, as it is called, and often break, forming obstinate ulcers. This is a picture which a physician sees nearly every day.

With the garter fastened above the knee all this pain and deformity is avoided.

An ungraceful carriage is sometimes owing to "bow