e just quoted is
sufficient, and I will sum the matter up with a few remarks which Mr.
Lennox Browne made as chairman at my lecture at the Aldersgate Street
Literary Institution, on October 9th, 1880. He then said that, in his
medical experience, he found that persons who suffered from their voices
generally owed their ailments to bad habits of using the voice, and not
to any defect in the larynx or resonance chamber. In several cases
lately he had sent such patients to Herr Behnke, who had given them
lessons in correct breathing, and who had thereby, and without any
medicine, galvanism, or other aid, restored their voices in a remarkably
short time.

From what has been said above about midriff and rib breathing _versus_
collar-bone breathing, the folly of tight-lacing, or, indeed, of in any
way interfering with the freedom of the waist, will be at once apparent.
We pride ourselves upon our civilization; we make a boast of living in
the age of science; physiology is now taught, or at least talked of, in
almost every school; the laws of health are proclaimed in lectures and
lessons innumerable all over the country, and we laugh at barbarous
customs of other nations, such, for instance, as that of Chinese women
preventing the growth of their feet by forcing them into boots of only
half their proper size. And yet our ladies wear instruments of torture
called corsets, altering the shape of their bodies, and positively
driving the lower ribs _into the lungs_! Now which folly is the
greater--that of doubling up the toes, or of crippling the body in its
most vital parts? Let ladies answer the question, and let them further
most solemnly consider that the girls of to-day are the mothers of
to-morrow, and that upon the measure of their own health and strength
depends the well-being of coming generations.

It is only fair to add, that if the practice of interfering with the
freedom of the waist is reprehensible in the case of ladies, it is, in
one sense, still more so in the case of the male sex, because, as has
been shown before, men depend more for their breathing upon the action
of the abdominal muscle than women. They should, therefore, neither wear
tight-fitting vests, nor suspend their pantaloons by means of
waistbands, belts, or buckles. Loose garments and braces are the proper
thing, though the latter are commonly, but erroneously, considered to be
injurious. _Abdominal_ belts may be worn with advantage by persons of
ei