brian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for
the hysteric affections which are common among the women of their
country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar recipe for the
highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their
fecundity. 'Dull as a dancer' is a familiar proverb at the
theatre. In fact, the best brains of Europe are convinced that
dancing brings with it a result eminently cooling.

"In support of this it may be necessary to add other observations.
The life of shepherds gives birth to irregular loves. The morals
of weavers were horribly decried in Greece. The Italians have
given birth to a proverb concerning the lubricity of lame women.
The Spanish, in whose veins are found many mixtures of African
incontinence, have expressed their sentiments in a maxim which is
familiar with them: _Muger y gallina pierna quebrantada_ [it is
good that a woman and a hen have one broken leg]. The profound
sagacity of the Orientals in the art of pleasure is altogether
expressed by this ordinance of the caliph Hakim, founder of the
Druses, who forbade, under pain of death, the making in his
kingdom of any shoes for women. It seems that over the whole
globe the tempests of the heart wait only to break out after the
limbs are at rest!"

What an admirable manoeuvre it would be to make a wife dance, and to
feed her on vegetables!

Do not believe that these observations, which are as true as they
are wittily stated, contradict in any way the system which we have
previously prescribed; by the latter, as by the former, we succeed in
producing in a woman that needed listlessness, which is the pledge of
repose and tranquility. By the latter you leave a door open, that the
enemy may flee; by the former, you slay him.

Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people and those
of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the name of
morality and sentiment.

"Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have?
What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or
her requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a
workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the
poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims
the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies,
which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heating
system of yours, which d