RIGHT or wrong applied to human beliefs and actions is sometimes said to be relative according to circumstances or conditions, but there are certain fundamental principles to which conformity or non-conformity is essentially right or wrong, and among these are the principles which govern the health of human beings.
The concern of this writing is to demonstrate the principles governing the construction of the corset--the most important garment worn by women--which must conform to the laws of physiology or it is radically wrong and a serious detriment to the bodily efficiency of the race. Not only has the suffering from the physiologically incorrect corset devolved upon the foolish women who for generations have voluntarily submitted to varying deformities of the body, that they might dress in prevailing modes, but it has fallen upon all those with whom they have been associated. Some physiologists plainly assert that the prime cause of women's physical inferiority to men lies in their unhygienic methods of dress. Opposing this are statistics declaring the greater longevity of women. Hence, it would seem that in spite of an idiotic defiance of the laws governing the proper development and functioning of the body, Nature's provision of endurance and vitality has enabled women to sustain a considerable part in the scheme of the race. How much more creditably they might have sustained that part, to what greater heights for the whole race in the more perfect development of the threefold being--physical, mental, spiritual--they might have attained, had it not been for the physical inefficiency of the constricted body, only those who have studied the subject scientifically can have an adequate understanding.
The kind of corsets women wear is as essential to health as the kind of food they eat, and should no more be dictated by fashion than should their bread and butter. The history of the varying shapes and proportions of corsets is found in the history of the costumes fashionable at the different periods described-the corset designed for the fashion, not the fashion for the corset. And even at this day women ask for corsets to give them "the latest fashionable figure," and corsets are advertised "to produce the lines of fashion," instead of the normal lines as shown in illustration 1.
