Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/71

 have we seen a female bust that answered these demands? Or rather, have we ever seen one? "I never knew before I came to Egypt," says Lady Duff-Gordon in her recent book of travels, "what a female breast is. We never see it in Europe." Neither do we in America, without it may be in some vigorous young country girl, who has grown up in ignorance of the arts which thwart nature.

Not that taste approves now-a-days that fashion which early in the last century prevailed in France and Spain. Then, in accordance with the mode of the day which despised everything which was spontaneous and delighted in the artificial and the abnormal, the type of elegance was a perfectly flat breast. The fine ladies used to wear from early girlhood circular plates of lead, strapped firmly against their breasts, in order to cause their absorption. Of course, these noble dames were utterly disqualified from nursing their own children, but this troubled them little.

Unfortunately, modern ladies, in their desire not to appear flat-breasted, are guilty of precisely the same violation of nature's laws. From early youth they wear pads of hair or cotton, which they fasten over the breasts with straps and the corset, so as to make a "form." These act in a similar manner as the plates of lead. The breasts are flattened, distorted, partly absorbed, and often completely unfitted for their natural function. The nipples are drawn in, and be