FASHION VERSUS HEALTH.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 317, 2 October 1908, Page 8

FASHION VERSUS HEALTH.

SEVERE REMARKS BY" A DOCTOR. ■■ (bt TiLiOßirH.—srstnii, corniasroNMNT.) ; Chrlstohurch, October 1. ' Fashion survives often in the most grotesque a.nd ridiculous forms, in-spite of all the doctors' say, but that does not prevent tho medical profession persevering in the attack. The address on fashion v. health last night by Dr. Truby King at the annual meeting of vthe Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children should have carried coriviction to many of his hearers iii r the large audience, composed almost exclusively; or 'womeh, ; but it may be doubted whether feminine obedience to fashion's dictates was weaßoned -to- any extent. Dr. King displayed a photograph of the Venus do Milo. "There is:a.great difference between that perfect type of womanhood and tho being of the fashion plate," he remarked, "and it is a. reflection on all of .us that no stand is taken against that which is not/only decidedly harmful to the women of . to-day, but is absolutely ruinous to the raco. : "What a.rtist would think of depicting ■the female form in'the distorted shape wo give it?" A series of fashion-plate photographs was shown to indicate that even the model had been unable to make her figure conform' to the demands of fashion, and that the photographs had • been afterwards "faked" in order to show fashionable women what to aspire- to. "It is ' decreed," tho speaker' said, "that woman is not to have the form her Maker gave her." The fashions this /year demand pressure and constriction upon other parts of the figure than ,were constricted' last year. Nothing would be more idiotic than the constant elFort to follow the'kaleidoscopic changes. The doctor also dealt with the distortion of the feet by fashionable boots and shoes. He cited a case in which a woman , had been crippled from .this "causa. She was unable to take exercise, and developed dyspepsia and an exceedingly pessimistio disposition, so much so indeed that her husband'.left her. "I am persuaded," Dr. King added, "thut if that woman had not distorted her feet her husband would havs been with harto^day."