A few corset makers, mainly women knowing their own needs, attempted to produce corsets that were more comfortable and therefore less injurious to health than those of the ordinary conventional type. To these they applied the term "hygienic." The number of these individual corsetières multiplied and their work became popular among those who knew them and won the attention and encouragement of members of the medical profession who are ever ready to adopt that which holds promise of improved physical condition for their patients. Seeing this new opening for "business" the rank and file of corset manufacturers began to adopt the terminology of the "hygienic" corsetières, though without changing the principles upon which their corsets were constructed. To illustration 10 attention is particularly directed as showing a corset advertised by the makers as a "surgical corset," and highly recommended by them to the medical and surgical professions as a solution of the corset problem.
However, nearly all the corset makers who have thus adopted the terms "hygienic" and "anatomical" as applied to their product have done so in the attempt to serve two masters. Going back only five years one encounters such corset advertisements as this: "A corset which reduces the waist from three to five inches, and yet is comfortable and 'hygienic.'"
"The corset which gives ease, comfort and grace, especially suitable for the prevailing fashion in gowns." "Our corsets have been adopted by the leaders of the fashionable world. Our corsets appeal to your desire for perfect health." So enamoured of the term "hygienic" did corset makers become that a corset was named the "Hygienic" and then advertised as the corset which produced "the latest fashionable figure."
Why the corsets thus advertised are not physiologically correct is due to two fundamental causes—the inability of the makers to design the correct garment, and their persistent adherence to the conventional forms of corsets, varying only to follow fashions in dress.
What corsets should and should not be are both clearly and uniformly defined in the writings of many medical and physiological authorities. Broadly stated, the corset should be constructed primarily for support, not compression. It should assist, not prevent, normal bodily development. It should per
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