TIGHT LACING.

Evening Post, Volume XVII, Issue 548, 28 June 1879, Page 1 (Supplement)

TIGHT LACING.

"Tight Lacing" was the subject of a sermon recently preached by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, and the Medical Journal comments on it as follows ;— We had believed that tight lacing was little practised by ladies nowadays. The average waist to which ladies' paper patterns are now cut iB, we understand, twenty-five inches, which is a very fair allowance ; and taper waists are not in England, at least at the present time, thought to be beautiful, although there are monstrous exceptions hardly sufficiently numerous to justify Mr. Haweis's denunciation. His "riding belt" swan-bill corsets are much less harmful than the old-fashioned laced stays, which compressed the ribs. However, Mr. Haweis is likely to have informed himself well on the subject, and, bo far as the practice exists, it well deserves all that he has to say against the "encased caricatures" who "move in torments, their smiles forced, their breath coming heavily, their blood checked." We think, however, that he must have misunderstood the "leading physician" who described a oase of death to him in words which he quotes as follows—" ' Death from natural oauses !' Lay no such flattering unction to your souL 'Death from rut in the liver and corn on the heart, produced by tight laoing.' These are the very words of a leading physician of the day to me."