TIGHT LACING
" Oh stay!" TOMMY MOOR E.
Wz do not number ourselves in the immense class of shallow persons who delight in making antitheses of Theory and Practice : on the con- trary, we believe, with BENTHAM, that the theory which is not borne out by practice is merely a bad theory; and it is as unreasonable thence to hold all theories in contempt, as it would be to hold all practice in contempt, because there are as many had as good practices in the world. Theory has indeed necessarily many errors ; and the most common and gratuitous of them consists in overlooking experience, and failing to profit by its corrective hints. How often has it been clearly proved to us, that we are destroyed by our bread, drugged to death in our beer, poisoned in our water! how convincingly have we been argued out of health and existence, and carried to the churchyard by most potent facts and irresistible conclusions !—yet here we are, tens of thousands, eating plaster of Paris, drinking decoction of coculus mdicus, or the still more abhmed putrid contents of foul cisterns, and nevertheless prosecuting our business or pleasures just as if we were not dead and buried in the eye of reason. Facts, stubborn facts, and undeniable inferences, prove that we should scarcely survive a dozen meals; while the tomb-stones and returns of mortality show that man is of longer life now than at any former period. The theory of death is thus falsified by the practice of living.
Some of our contemporaries are just now employing themselves upon the ladies' waists, and convincingly showing that the fashionable practice of tight lacing is the destruction of health, beauty, amiability, and ultimately, of course, of life itself. We quote a description of the effects from an essay which the Ex- aminer of last Sunday quotes from an old Scotsman.
" First, the lowest part of the shell of the thorax yields most ; the false ribs, and the lower true ribs, are pressed inwards ; the whole viscera in this part of the body, including part of the intestines, are squeezed close together and forced upwards ; and as the pressure is continued above, they are forced higher still. If the lacing is carried further, the breast bone is raised, and sometimes bent; the collar bone protrudes its inner extremity ; and the shoulder blades are forced backwards. The under part of the lungs is pressed together, and the entrance of the blood into it hindered ; the abdominal vis- cera, being least protected, suffer severely ; the stomach is compressed, ita distension prevented, and its situation and form changed, giving rise to im- perfect digestion ; the blood is forced up to the head, where it generates vari- ous complaints; the liver has its shape altered and its functions obstructed ; the bones having their natural motions constrained, distortion ensues, and the high shoulder, the twisted spine or breast bone, begins at last to manifest itself through the integuments and the clothes."
We now come to the specific consequences.
" Tight-lacing produces-
" In the Head ; headache, giddiness, tendency to fainting, pain in the eyes, pain and ringing in the ears, and bleeding at the nose.
" In the Thorax ; besides the displacement of the bones, and the injury done to the breast, tight-lacing produces shortness of breath, spitting of blood, consumption, derangement of the circulation, palpitation of the heart, and water in the chest.
" In the Abdomen; loss of appetite, squeamishness, eructations, vomiting of blood, depraved digestion, flatulence, diarrhcea, colic pains, induration of the liver, dropsy, and rupture. It is also followed by melancholy, hysteria, and many diseases peculiar to the female constitution, which it is not neces- sary to enumerate in detail."
The essayist then proceeds to show that tight-lacing destroys the beauty of the countenance by its effect upon temper, which regulates expression ; and he concludes with averring— In time past, we were ignorant enough to admire, like our neighbours, slender waists ; but thanks to our medical friend, we are cured of this folly. We were wont to think that the loves and the graces played round such deli- cate forms ; but in future we shall never see them without thinking of twisted bones, dropsy, consumption, indurated livers, fainting, spitting of blood, melancholy, hysteria, sour tempers, rickety children, pills, lotions, and doe- ton's bills."
Not one syllable of all this can we gainsay; and yet if we gaze out of window or walk into a thronged street for five minutes, we see a hundred ready examples, which shake belief in the representation. The women look unlogically healthy ; and their back and breast bones preserve the forms of grace and nature, in defiance of stays and the inductions of right reason. We certainly ought to go to the fashionable promenade in Kensington Gardens \Vial the expectation of seeing a number of pale spectres, red (as the Latin idiom would express it) only as to the nose, misshaped like ill-trussed fowls at the breast, and describing the figure of S with their spines : but, somehow or other, we do not anticipate precisely this sort of exhibition ; and in fact we do observe, that the young women of fashion arc remarkable for their fine well-grown forms, and their healthy appearances. Nevertheless, we repeat again, they should by all the rules of science be decrepid; but the fact is that They are not so ; and no finer, or more generally healthy and long-lived women, exist on the face of the earth. When Zadig's eye was injured, the doctors agreed, that if the right eye had been hurt instead of the left, they could have cured it ; but as fate had willed it to be the left, he must inevitably lose it. Zadi,s;.'s eye, however, got well against the rules of science ; and then the doctors wrote folios to prove that it ought to have fallen out of his bead. Tight lacing ought to torture the -ladies spines into the figure of Ss; it ought to make their breast-bonus poke out, or give in, their noses red, their expressions of countenance sharp as vinegar; it ought to cause them headache, giddiness, and bleeding at the nose—to displace their bones, infuse water in the chest, generate consumption, and all the hideous ills, the certain cure of which is advertised in every newspaper for a guinea ; it ought to destroy appetite, digestion, and create flatulence, diarrha, melancholy, hysteria, &e. &c. But we see that the bones are straight, the che,ts too perfectly shaped, the noses antithetical to Bardolph, the expression of countenance amiable to a dangerous degree, headache not extraordinarily prevalent, con- sumption rather below the former average in frequency. As for appetite, let the essayist go to the Horticultural breakfast, or witness any fashionable supper ; and fm the melancholy and hysteria, dream- spree at the gay and cheerful faces which, thank Heaven, meet and glad us at every turn, notwithstanding the stay-laces and the science of physic. Because we dislike exaggerations, which accomplish nothing by attempting to prove too much, arc we apologists for tight-lacing ?- certainly not. if women can preserve their health, who are addicted to so bad a practice, they would be infinitely Letter if they had abstained from it. The custom must be inconvenient and prejudicial, though not to the degree insisted on by its opponents. We object to it also on a score which will have more weight with the fair offenders—it is really ungraceful. There is no beauty without proportion, which is implied in the word symnzetq ; and a very small waist must be a fault. We marvel to hear persons who should comprehend the force of their expressions, speaking as in praise of "an extremely little waist," or foot : the terms imply defect, for all extremes are inconsistent with sym metiy, and must be faults in the particular person, though fit beauties for a figure of smaller proportions.
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