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CHAP. X.] passive movements, and the surgical world is beginning to acknowledge that the value of instruments as a curative measure for such cases has been greatly over-estimated.

After the attainment of full growth, girls may wear the ordinary dress in fashion with very much less risk of injury than they could have done in earlier years; and the reason of this is obvious, for their constitutions have become settled, the bony structure of their frames has grown firm and hard, and their organs have attained their full and natural development.

The age for the completion of growth in women cannot be definitely fixed under twenty-three years, but by the time when girls "come out," at about eighteen, they are as a rule sufficiently well developed to be able to conform to the requirements of fashion, and the wearing of corsets will do them little if any harm, provided they are well made and not tightly laced. Ill-made stays have been known to produce cancer of the breast by pressure on and friction against those delicate organs, and they not unfrequently hinder the development of the breasts to such an extent that they render it impossible for many mothers to perform their natural duties to the young infants who are dependent on them for the only nourishment which is suitable and wholesome for them.

The ordinary stays worn by women when first they go about again after childbirth but too often increase the tendency to displacement which they are intended to avert. They press those organs