Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/74

 and the breast forward. In this position, draw slowly as deep an inspiration as possible, and retain it by an increased effort for a few seconds. Then breathe it gradually forth. After a few natural breaths, repeat the long inspiration. Let this be done for fifteen or twenty minutes every day, and in six weeks' time a perceptible increase in the diameter of the chest and in its prominence will be very evident.

The breasts are liable to many diseases, especially to tumors, which destroy their shape. But these come strictly within the province of the surgeon, and need not be mentioned here. So, too, the breasts require especial attention during and after confinement, while nursing, and at weaning, both to preserve their health and their beauty, but as these points have been spoken of at length, in the "Physical Life of Woman," to which we have referred, the repetition is superfluous. We would, however, call attention to the fact, that if a woman does not intend to nurse her child, she should, to preserve her breast in shape, dry up her milk at the outset by artificial means.

The lower part of the chest is more capacious than the upper, and incloses some of the most important organs of the economy. At the waist, the body should have the least circumference. While this is true, it is an absurd and ugly fashion, not sanctioned by any rule of art, and in positive opposition to the laws of health and beauty, to compress, fasten, and