oes she lavish beyond the
requirements of perfect health.

The same laws which govern the nutrition of muscles, apply also
to the vital organs. Pressure that impedes circulation of blood
through them must suppress their functions proportionally. With
the lungs, heart, and digestive organs impaired by external
devices, which force them into abnormal relations, health is
impossible. Every other part of the body--nay, life
itself--depends upon the perfection of these organs. The ancients
fittingly called them the tripod of life.

Consumption, heart disease, dyspepsia, and the multiform phases
of uterine and ovarian diseases are among the natural and
frequent consequences of compressing the internal organs. Men
could not endure such physical indignities as women inflict upon
themselves. Should they attempt to do so, they would not long
hold the proud position of "bread winners," which is now theirs
by virtue of their more robust qualities.

[Illustration: Street costume. Spring, 1884.]

[Illustration: Street costume. Summer, 1891. (Compare waist with
anterior view of thorax of corset-wearing lady of to-day.) See page
412.]

It is difficult to imagine a slavery more senseless, cruel, or
far-reaching in its injurious consequences than that imposed by
fashion on civilized womanhood during the past generation. Her health
has been sacrificed, and in countless instances her life has paid the
penalty; while posterity has been dwarfed, maimed, and enervated, and
in body, mind, and soul deformed at its behests. In turn every part of
her body has been tortured. On her head at fashion's caprice the hair
of the dead has been piled. Hats and bonnets, wraps and gowns laden
with heavy beads and jet have as seriously impaired her health as they
have rendered her miserable; the tight lacing required by the wasp
waists has produced generations of invalids and bequeathed to
posterity suffering that will not vanish for many decades. By it, as
has been pointed out by the authorities cited, every vital organ in
the body has been seriously affected. The heart and lungs, by nature
protected by a cage of bone, have been abnormally crushed in a space
so contracted as to absolutely prohibit the free action upon which
health depended; while the downward pressure was necessarily equally
injurious to her delicate organism. The tightly drawn corset has
proved an unmiti