CAUSES OF DECLINE IN THE HUMAN RACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6362, 8 April 1882, Page 7

CAUSES OF DECLINE IN THE HUMAN RACE.

A writer discussing the causes of decline in the human nice says :—The physical consequences of the too often existing rajum , we see every day around us. We see them in the btunted, undersized lads who have all the knowledge and habits without thehodily or mental attributes of men, with a taste for what is called " life" while still in their early teens, either empty-headed and l>!u.--c or priggish and disagreeable, each case arising from the unhealthy forcing system of our ways of living and our cramming education. We see them in the girls—artificial, angling for admiration while yet in the schoolroom, giving their wrapt attention to the solution of the great mystery as to how they can best succeed in reducing their waists to the smallest possible dimensions. Even as a matter of wjtheticism it is astonishing how the realistic tendency of the day can fail to observe that the fashion of tight-lacing is opposed to all beauty of form or figure : and it is not too much to say that the majority of young girls, otherwise pretty and attractive, are nothing but artistic deformities. As a matter of health, both as affects the girl of the present and the matron of the future, the c.ise is far sadder. There is not an organ in the interior of the body that is not put out of its place and its action deranged by this lamentable species of vanity ; and how is it to be expected that, with the health ruined and the whole tone of the system shaken, the girl, thus maltreated, can become the motherot healthy, well-formed children? The invisible waist, the Grecian bend, the high-heeled boot, and other similar absurdities are terrible blots in the sanitary and moral life of every young girl, the effects of which do not stop here ; and every effort should be made by the heads of families, by medical men, by all who have got an eye to see and a mind to think, to cuimti:r:u:t, by public opinion, I) 3' education, by example, and by judicious advice, the mischief that is being daily done to the young of tin: present day and to future children under the specious title of "fashion."