Page:Toleration of the corset1048.png

 sheet, and stands against the wall again. At once it is evident that the shoulders have gone backward, the hips forward, the whole center of gravity backward. The stoop is nearly gone. The pressures are found to be right, and the corset is commended. Exercise is planned for her and she is told to return soon to report, and that further alterations will be needed in one month or two, as only partial correction is undertaken at first.

With a little more trouble one secures more picturesque evi­dence by taking front and back outlines, and for this one needs no draughtsman's skill. A square that traces an outline may be improvised as follows: Into the groove between the covers of a thin book of about 10 inches in height, one may lay two pencils of different colors (Fig. 35) the tips projecting just beyond the top and bottom. Elastic bands hold them, and, if looped around the wood, permit a little play. The two hands hold the book steady and level as its short edge hugs the paper and its long edge follows the patient's body profile, marking the outline as it goes, from neck to upper thigh. More or less complex and costly devices I have seen or tried, such as those of Schulteis, Kellogg, Reynolds and Lovett, and others. Certain devices I have had made. Shadow tracings and photographs in numbers were used. With all these, accuracy in detail fails to compensate for cumbrous inconveniences and slow processes, as compared with a long pencil held at right angles to the paper by some simple square. In time, as has been said, any man, or his nurse, may dis­pense with these means, if he choose, and will quickly size up con­ditions without records. In noting pressures, in office work, manometer readings are needed only for research or to convince the skeptical—though to one's manometer hung on a wall the attachment of an extra under-corset-testing-bag by a T connection is a small matter. In practice, the test of the hand run down inside the corset suffices. The ribs first. Have they decently easy play? Is the epigastrium practically without pressure? Is the pressure in the umbilical region moderate—somewhat more than a man's summer belt? Is the suprapubic pressure more than the umbil­ical? It must be greater. Is this pressure well down to the pubes, or is there a gap between corset and bone, with lower abdomen thrust downward? Does the corset grip and girdle and get its real hold on the space between iliac crest and trochan­ter, as it should? How wide is the gape at the back? How