Chapter 40

ADDED INJURIES FROM TIGHT CLOTHING.

We have talked of the effect of tight clothing upon the breathing power. Let us see what other injuries arise from wearing the dress too tight. In the first place, the action of the heart is impeded. The heart is a hollow muscle which must be continually filled with blood and emptied again many times a minute from the moment of birth till the moment of death. You have been lying down for an hour; let me count your pulse. Now sit up for a few moments. I find, now, that it beats faster. Now stand up, and it beats still faster. You see, it increases continually as you get into the erect position. Now walk quickly across the floor and you will see how much it has increased again in rapidity.

You will realize how much the dress interferes with the action of the heart better from an illustration. Professor Sargent made an experiment with a number of girls. One day they were dressed in perfectly loose clothing. He counted the pulse of each. It beat on the average of eighty-four times in a minute. He had them run five hundred and forty yards in the space of two and a half minutes. The pulse was again counted. It had increased to one hundred and fifty-six beats in a minute. This illustrates the effect of exercise even in loose clothing. The next day at the same time, dressed with a corset which reduced the waist to twenty-four inches, they ran the same distance in the same length of time, and then he found that the pulse had run up to one hundred and sixty-eight beats in a minute, showing how much harder it was for the heart to do its work when restricted by tight clothing. No acrobat would attempt to perform feats of strength or of agility if restricted even so much as by a belt.

The Russian Government has issued an edict that the soldiers must wear their pantaloons held up by suspenders, for it has been demonstrated that when they wear them supported by a belt around the waist they are not able to do a fair amount of work. The Austrian Government has also decreed that the pantaloons of soldiers are not to be suspended by belts because of the increase of kidney difficulty caused thereby.

We will understand why kidney difficulty is caused by tight clothing when we study the location of the kidneys and how they are affected by compression of the ribs. Most people think the kidneys lie low down in the back, but in reality they lie up under the short ribs, and the pressure of tight clothing brings the ribs to bear directly upon the kidneys, injuring them in such a way as often to cause disease.

The heart and lungs are protected by a bony framework called the thorax, but below the thorax there is no protection for the internal organs except that of the muscles, therefore the corset or tight clothing can do most damage to the vital organs below the diaphragm. The largest of these is the liver. It should lie close up under the diaphragm, from which it is suspended. Under the influence of tight clothing it is often pressed over on the right side, sometimes extending over the whole front of the body, or even as low down as the navel. It is rutted by the pressure of the ribs. The corset liver is well known in the dissecting-room. Sometimes, where corsets are not worn and tight skirts are worn, supported by the hips, the liver has almost been cut in two, the pieces being only held together by a sufficient band of tissue to keep them from dying.

When Hiram Powers, the great sculptor, was in this country, he once attended an elegant party, and was observed watching very intently a beautifully dressed, fashionable woman. A friend, noticing his interest, said to him, "What an elegant figure she has, hasn't she?"

"Well," said Powers, "I was wondering where she put her liver."

You see, Powers had studied the human body, and when he saw such an outline as the figure of a fashionable woman, he knew that some internal organ must be displaced in order to create that tapering waist, and his anxiety was for the internal organs. As an artist he did not admire the tapering waist, as is shown by the beautiful marble statue which he made. No artist would perpetuate in marble the figure of the fashionable woman.

Not only is the liver thus displaced, but the stomach is often pressed out of its original position, which should be also close up under the diaphragm, towards the left side. By the pressure of clothing it is sometimes pushed down until it lies in the abdominal cavity, even as low down as the navel. This is the statement of Dr. J.H. Kellogg, who, in his sanitarium at Battle Creek, examines hundreds, or even thousands of women in a year, and asserts that it is almost impossible to find a woman whose stomach is where it belongs. This is a serious matter, because no organ can do its work properly when it is out of its rightful position. We understand this in any machinery except that of the human body. We would not meddle with a man-made machine because that would hinder its perfect working, but we do not hesitate to interfere with the body, forgetful that it, too, is a machine, divinely created, and with powers most fateful to us for weal or woe.

But the harm is not all done by the displacement of the organs mentioned. The bowels suffer, and we can best understand what is done to them when we understand how they are placed in the abdominal cavity.

Let me take the ruffle you are making. The mesentery is a delicate, narrow membrane about twenty feet long. We will compare it to the ruffle. Folded in it at one edge are the small intestines, just as I can run this bodkin into the hem of this ruffle. The other edge of the mesentery is gathered up as you have gathered the ruffle. It is gathered into a space of about six inches in length, and is fastened up and down the spine in the region of the small of the back. You can see, if I gather up twenty feet of this ruffle into a space of six inches, how the mesentery, with the intestines folded in the free edge, are held in the abdominal cavity. They are held loosely, and at the same time so that the intestines cannot be tied in knots or loops upon each other. In this way the ruffle flares out into the abdominal cavity. The intestines should stay in their place close up under the liver and stomach, but if pressure is brought to bear around the body at this point, the bowels begin to sag into the abdominal cavity. The abdominal walls lose their tonicity because they are so compressed that they cannot have a perfect circulation, the bowels sink down still further into the pelvis, and pull upon their attachment in the small of the back, creating backache. The stomach sags down into the cavity; the liver sinks, and all the organs pull upon their attachments; so it is no wonder that women have backaches and headaches, and their eyes feel bad, and they are unable to stand or walk. We don't want small rooms in our dwelling-houses, we don't like it if we haven't sufficient space for our furniture; but in this bodily house in which we dwell we are quite willing to constrict the rooms in which the vital organs or furniture are placed, until everything is huddled together in the closest pressure, so that the organs are unable to do their work. It wouldn't matter in our parlors if the chairs and tables were huddled close together, for they are not constantly changing in size, but it does matter in a room where machines must have space to work and such space is not permitted them; and we cannot expect good work where we crowd machinery so that it does not have adequate room.

The influence of tight clothing upon the pelvic organs is to displace them and create a great many difficulties which we know as "Female Diseases." But these, in my opinion, are not the most important things. The important things are the displacement of the vital organs of the body--those organs without which we cannot live, and those organs the perfect working of which is necessary both to our health and our happiness. If we are wise we will be exceedingly anxious that every vital organ shall be allowed to hold its own position, to do its own work, with plenty of room.

The impeding of the heart-action by tight clothing is not in itself the most serious effect of this restriction. The serious trouble is in the disturbance of the circulation. Upon a perfect circulation depends perfect nutrition. The blood must go in sufficient quantity to every organ in order that it may be fully nourished. When the waist is compressed the organs do not receive their full amount of blood. It is retained, and therefore the organs are congested. The feet are cold because the blood does not reach them in sufficient quantity, and the brain, it may be, is hot, because the blood is not taken from the head with enough rapidity and furnished to the other organs. So we find that tight clothing interferes with the integrity and health of every organ in the body, and consequently with our happiness and with our usefulness.

The reason we admire the tapering waist is because we have been wrongly educated. We have acquired wrong ideas of beauty. We have accepted the ideals of the fashion-plate rather than those of the Creator. We find that some form of physical deformity maintains in almost every country. The Chinese deform the feet, and we think this is barbarous, but it is really not as serious as the deforming of the vital parts of the body. The Flathead Indian is deformed in babyhood by being compressed between boards until the head changes its shape. Among some savage nations the leg is bandaged for a few inches above the ankle and for a few inches below the knee and the central part is allowed to expand as it will, and this deformity to them constitutes beauty. Among other nations, holes are made in the ears and pieces of wood are inserted. The size of these pieces is gradually increased until the lobe of the ear will hang down upon the shoulder and a piece of wood as large as a man's arm be worn in the ears. All of these things seem to us most horrible; yet, after all, they are not as much an insult to the Divine Architect of the body as the deformity practised by civilized and so-called Christian people, who by restriction of the waist interfere with the vital organs and prevent the body from being perfect in its development, or perfect in its action. The activity of the body is an evidence of its life, and if it is so tied up that it cannot be active, it certainly is not in the fullest condition of life.