THE USE QOF CORSETS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XIX, 7 May 1898, Page 586

THE USE QOF CORSETS.

WHAT CONSTITUTES REASONABLY TIGHT LACING? At a meeting of the British Association at Bath, a paper was recently read in the Physiological Section upon the use of stays. The joint authors, the late Professor Roy and one of his colleagues in the University of Cambridge, were enthusiastic in the praise of corsets, alleging that, worn in the daytime, during the principal hours of exertion, these ‘strange disguisements,’ as an old writer once called them, are beneficial, and that ‘reasonably tight lacing’ increases mental and physical activity by causing a more liberal supply of blood to the brain, muscles, and nerves. At the same time they condemned the extreme practice of tight lacing. The theory of the Professor and his colleague sounds logical at. first (says a writer in ‘Health News’), but upon closer investigation it will be seen that they assumed much more than they proved. Admitting for argument’s sake, that Nature has been so remiss in her arrangements that it is necessary for women (how are the men to manage, by the way?) to resort to some means of increasing the flow of blood to the head, etc., by robbing the abdominal viscera, is the practice of compression the mostsensible? Blood is forced from the abdominal and thoracic viscera to the head, and to the surface of the body by firm pressure; but is this an unmixed benefit to the wearer of tight stays? On the contrary, the gradually reddening nose, the headache, and frequent peevish irritability (‘increased mental activity (?), the laborious respiration, and inability either to assume an easy position or to move about with grace and freedom (how about ‘increased physical activity’?) too plainly demonstrate that ‘reasonably tight lacing’ is fraught with discomfort and danger. So long as women are to be found who, to gratify personal vanity, or to conform with fashionable notions, will submit cheerfully to any inconvenience, it is little short of folly to advocate ‘reasonably tight lacing.’ Who shall decide, too. what constitutes this condition? Besides, if a woman, through physical weakness, needs some kind of support for the back, it should be supplied by the use of some sort of soft material. and not of unyielding corsets, rendered hard by metallic or other inelastic substances. As regards the numerous ailments to which tlte votaries of tight lacing voluntarily subject themselves, these are generally recognised, though the full extent’ of injury to health and even danger to life, owing to serious physiological derangements, are known only to the unfortunate victims of the habit, and to their medical attendants. English women ridicule—and naturally, too—the absurd custom which causes ladies in China (the practice, we may observe, does not prevail amongst the lower classes) to eramp their feet, till walking becomes almost impossible: yet they do not give a thought, apparently, to the absurdity and folly of compressing their lungs till they can scarcely breathe, their hearts till palpitation and fainting are produced, and other internal organs to such an extant that the displacement and distortion must result in present suffering and future illness.