intestines, etc., as to obstruct the rising and falling movement belonging to a natural respiration.

The lungs of a well-developed adult occupy the space of a hundred and fifty to three hundred cubic inches. They consist largely of air cells, so minute that some anatomists have stated their number as high as six hun

dred millions in both lungs. (Rochoux). Lieberkühn has estimated the amount of surface on which the blood is exposed to the action of the air in them, to be not less than fourteen hundred square feet.

Whatever mechanical contrivance is so applied to the chest as to shut out from the lungs a part of the air they are capable of receiving, causes a degeneration of the blood, increases the liability to disease, and becomes the

ground-work of premature decay and death. Dr. Herbst, by actual experiment made on young men who wore the Russian belt or corset, ascertained that when belted they inhaled, at their deepest inspiration, from one fourth to

Fig. 3.

CORSETED VENUS.1

one third less air than when the belt was removed, and the chest left free from constraint.

It is obvious that the lungs of a child, although healthy, are not large enough to aerate or purify the blood of an adult. A certain proportion, between the capacity of the lungs and the size of the other organs, is necessary to

1 Effect of corset upon Fig. 1, changing the form.

their healthy activity and power of endurance. If, in childhood, or during the period of the growth of the body, the chest is kept in a state of compression, so as to prevent the natural and full development of the lungs, the healthy proportion between them and the other organs is violated, and the injury can never be fully repaired. When disease attacks one lung, and permanently shuts up one half or the whole of its air cells, there is not left the

same vigor of health, or power of resistance to the causes of disease, which nature intended. I have seen this verified in the case of a young lady, Miss M. At the age of about seventeen she had an inflammation of the right side of the chest, which terminated in complete hepatization or consolidation of the right lung. The sound on percussion was dull or flat. The ribs on the right side were shut

down closely upon each other, and had not the slightest. appreciable motion in respiration. In this condition, with only one lung to act upon the blood, she lived, in delicate and fluctuating health, for five years, when, on a cold day in winter, she rode out a few miles and took cold, which was followed by inflammation of the left lung, and a rapid consumption, which carried her off in a few weeks. Had

both lungs been sound, she might very probably have so far resisted the cold as to have experienced nothing worse from it than a slight indisposition.

Among the lower animals those that are best fitted for activity, strength, and prolonged muscular exertion possess large lungs, as the race-horse and the greyhound. Dealers in horses always look out for an animal with a large chest, or "good wind." Would it be well to apply a corset to these animals for the chase? Do they not need it as much as women and children?

Within the last seventy years female infants at the breast have been put in corsets. I have in my possession

Fig. 7.

IN UNITED STATES,1

1835.

1 One needs a fan and an open window in order to look at such figures as 5, 6, 7.