men breathe differently from women, the former using the abdominal method that is, pushing down the diaphragm—and the latter doing most of the work with their upper ribs. One reason of this difference is that the fair sex insist on fixing their lower ribs, to which the diaphragm is attached, with stays, which make free movement of that muscle impossible. Doctors have fulminated against tight-lacing for the last three centuries,[1] but to as little purpose as the Archbishop of Rheims thundered against the jackdaw. Fashion must be obeyed, whatever its victims may have to suffer. It is right to state, however, that stays not long ago found a champion in no less a person than the Professor of Pathology in the University of Cambridge. Professor Roy caused a little mild scandal at the last meeting of the British Association by urging that the use of stays might have certain advantages. If the Archbishop of Canterbury had stood up in Convocation and denied the efficacy of baptism, he could not have shocked his hearers more than Dr. Roy did by such a profession of heresy. The scientific ladies, who resemble the Greek statues in the looseness of their waists if in nothing else, groaned over this backsliding in high places, and their more frivolous sisters rejoiced. A Defender of the Faith, however, opportunely appeared in the person of Dr. Garson, who at once put the question to the touch by measurements made on a number of ladies and gentlemen then present. These showed that the vital capacity (which is measured by the quantity of air that can be expelled from the lungs after the deepest possible inspiration) was considerably greater in the men than in the women, and that while in the former there was a constant diminution in the vital capacity in every period of ten years after the age of thirty, in the latter it actually increased after fifty, a time of life at which the majority of ladies begin to think more of comfort than of restraining the exuberance of their "figure." The truth appears to be, however, that the slight pressure exercised by stays does not matter in the case of ladies who are not called upon to use their voices professionally, and who do not care to excel as amateurs. In the ordinary work of life stays do not cause any inconvenience, and it is only when they are absurdly tight that they do serious harm to the internal organs. In the case of the artiste it is quite otherwise; here anything which
- ↑ Stays are generally said to have been introduced by Catherine de Medicis, who may be supposed to have had a natural genius for the invention of instruments of torture. They were, however, in use long before her time. I have in my possession a drawing made for me in 1884 by Mr. Lewis Wingfield from a MS. in the British Museum of the date 1043. It is figured by Strutt, who calls it "A Droll Devil." Mr. Wingfield more aptly terms it the "Fiend of Fashion." It represents a figure fantastically dressed in what, I suppose, was the height of fashion of the day. Its special interest in connection with the present subject is that it wears a pair of stays, laced up in front, and of sufficient constrictive power to please a modern mondaine.
