they leave the upper region of the chest exposed—those very regions where tubercular consumption, bronchial and inflammatory diseases generally commence, or are most prone to attack—to the vicissitudes of season, weather, temperature, humidity, and external injury. These noxious and unnecessary articles of clothing-these mischievous appliances to the female form, useful only to conceal defects and make up deficiencies in appearance—are rendered still more injurious by the number of unyielding, or only partially yielding, supports with which they are constructed on every side. These are the whalebones in the back and sides, and steel in front, extending from nearly the top of the sternum almost to the pubes. The motions of the trunk and spine are thereby restrained, and the nutrition of the compressed parts impaired; but, irrespective of the displacement of vital and assimilative viscera that follows the amount of pressure, the metal support in front has an injurious effect which has been universally overlooked. However well it may be protected from contact with the surface, it acts as a conductor of animal warmth and of the electro-motive agency passing through the frame, it carries off by its polarization into the surrounding air, especially during humid states of the atmosphere, the electricity of the body, this agent being necessary to the due discharge of the nervous functions either in its electro-galvanic or magneto-electric state of manifestation. The injurious influence of stays on the female economy, as respects not only diseases of the spinal column but also the disorders of the uterine organs, is manifest to all who consider the subject."— DR. COPELAND'S Medical Dictionary, p. 855.
We have selected the above extract from Dr. Copeland, because he is one of the most talented, learned, and judicious medical writers of this day, and one, too, whose work will be read for a long time to come, as his "Dictionary of Practical Medicine" is an elaborate digest of the whole circle of medical literature. But let everyone adhere to their
