THIN STOCKINGS, THICK ANKLES

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 20

THIN STOCKINGS, THICK ANKLES

TERRIBLE ALTERNATIVES FOR MISS 1925. The deplorable habits of “ Miss 1925 ” have been the subject of frequent attacks by grave physicians, but it must bo admitted that she has generally given a port toss of the head and passed on.

ivow, however, a doctor comes along with an assertion calculated to make the blood of the flapper run cold. Put iMidiy it is tins: " Him silk stockings may cause thick ankles.”

Of course the medical authority concerned—Dr F. Parkes Weber, writing in the ‘ British Medical Journal ’—does not state his case quite so crudely as this.

First lie makes the following declaration :

“ A kind of chronic (indurative) erythema of the legs in girls and young women seems now to bo becoming by no means very uncommon.”

“Erythema,” bo it noted, may be described as uniform redness with puffiness of tho skin.

But, reverting again to Dr Weber’s scientific language, merely pausing to ask tho flapper to note that the word malleolus refers to the ankle wo next find that—

“The thickening may bo marked, extending from a little below the external malleolus upwards, and the interior and exterior aspects of the legs are chiefly involved. . . . The limbs feel cold, and tho patients may complain of pain, tenderness, puniesthosia, or a sensation of heaviness in them. The condition . . . affects females whoso ages are mostly between fourteen and twenty years.”

Dr Weber continues: “11. MacCormac has suggested that the scanty covering of the legs now customary, by thin stockings only, from the upper edge of the boots or shoes to the lower border of the dress, is responsible for the erythema. S. E. Dove and some others support this view, and the condition did not attract medical attention before short dresses and thin silk stockings became generally popular.” Commenting on tin’s, the writer says that if it bo admitted that in certain persons a constitutional defect in the capillary circulation may constitute a sod -or basis favorable to the development of the true tuberculous “ erythema induratum ” of Bazin, one may suppose that in girls and young women with a similar constitutional capillary defect the local action of cold cm the poorly clothed portions of tho logs may give rise to more or loss ponnamont atony (lack of tone) of the superficial blood capillaries, leading in some cases to a red or cyanotic thickening of tho affected skin and subcutaneous tissue. In other words—“thick ankles.”

Dr Weber also says that the gradual abandonment of tight lacing has led to the complete disappearance of chlorsis or green sickness among women and girls, which was so familiar to those who were house physicians at hospitals in London about 1880.