Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/43

 adjusted with scrupulous exactitude to fit the figure, or it will do more harm than good.

The same means may be applied with very beneficial results in another deformity quite common and indirectly quite noticeable; this is when the form is lost by child-bearing. This is often accompanied with distressing sensations of "goneness" and emptiness at the pit of the stomach. It gives a stoop to the figure and a shuffling gait. A well-fitting support here is all that is required.

One of the most common causes of ungracefulness in motion remains to be told. It lies in diseases peculiar to women. None but the physician knows how frequent these diseases are. None but he fully appreciates what a terrible foe they are to beauty, not to speak of health and happiness. The lady reclining on the fauteuil, and the wash-woman standing at the tub, victims to these distressing maladies, alike reveal in the positions they assume, and in the gait they adopt, an unconscious effort to "save themselves," and to avoid the suffering which an unwary motion or a painful position gives.

What a marplot this is to beauty! What chance is there for free and supple motion when pain strikes through one at every unconsidered turn! And how common is the misfortune!

It were vain for us to go at length, or at all, into this subject. We can only say that so long as such a