Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10419, 17 April 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Question of the Corsets waa to have been fought out in Paris, under the auspices of the International Scientific Institute. The name of the latter body sounds rather a dry one, and solemn enough to suggest ideas about breaking a butterfly on the wheel. The programme, however, proved decidedly attractive. Ib was stated thus : " The Corset and Its Influence on the Health and Beauty of Woman, with experiments on two living subjects during the lecture.' . This was whab drew the audience—the modern ceatue or Venue in a straitwaiebcoat, illustrated by living pictures. And then the opposition had advertised their intention to speak, for there are thon who claim that the tight-laced shepherdess a la Watteau is an healthy and beautiful to look upon as the Venus of Milo. Ib would have been a case of Phryne before the judges, and a large and frivolous audience had assembled whose conversation was nob quite so strait-laced a the conet they had met to denounce. Bob tbe trial ended in a fiasco, because the two " living subject*" never pat in an appearance." The lecture presented no other attraction than the X rays and tbe pathology of the painful. People bad not come to study the Melancholy of Anatomy, and before the curtain had I dropped down they, had all dropped out,