and a balance is established. The corset can harm strong women little, weak women much.
Whether intra-pelvic pressure can be lowered by any so-called lifting action applied to the lower abdomen seems to me doubtful, and no such condition has been found in these tests. A better corset substituted for a vicious one, with bettered posture, lessens intra-pelvic pressure.
The chart shows manometer readings of corset pressures of twenty consecutive cases taken at random. If the red line
represents a correct grading of pressure, that is, low in the costal region and epigastric, the umbilical less than the suprapubic, and only of really high degree between ilium and trochanter, it is obvious how far the black lines vary from this standard of a permissible corset. In more than half the cases the ribs are squeezed in and held fast. The epigastric group of observations represents a satisfactory low plane of pressure, with one vicious exception. As an example of what these figures mean let me say that men of moderate girth wearing suspenders sustain, between meals, an average pressure, on the trouser band, of 20 mm. A summer belt runs from 25 to 30 mm. With a belt at 40, strong
