and, when digestion is imperfect, of restoring it again to powerful and healthy action.
The heart, by every pulsation, propels the blood along the arteries, which continue to divide and subdivide, till they become too small to be seen by the naked eye. They can be traced into subdivisions still more minute by the aid of the microscope, but the most powerful optical instruments cannot trace them to their termination, so infinitely small and numerous are their ramifications. Indeed, the finest point that can be made cannot be inserted in the flesh without penetrating them. It is in these inconceivably small capillary vessels that the blood expands its life-giving energies. It then passes into the veins. But, by this time, it becomes charged with carbon, of which charcoal is mainly composed, which evolves so poisonous a gas when burned. This carbon it is which gives its dark blue, leaden aspect. To carry off this carbon, by respiration, it is one of the offices of the lungs. When, however, respiration is imperfect, the air close, the breathing obstructed by asthma, wale-bone, or steel bars, this deadly poison, unable to escape, is compelled to return with the blood, to irritate the system, to enfeeble vitality, to destroy life.
Stop the action of the stomach by witholding nutrition, and how soon human beings die. Suspend the functions of the lungs, by withholding air, and how soon they suffocate. And just in that proportion in which either of these great functions is regarded, in just that proportion is life extinguished and death hastened, Tight-lacing cramps the action of both the lungs and stomach, and thereby retards both digestion and respiration, and in just that proportion deprives those who lace of life.
The amount of air supposed to be breathed at each ordinary, natural inspiration, is found to average about six pints; while the amount usually inspired by a tight-laced lady, is only about three pints, or a diminution of about one half! Of course, tight-lacers have only half of their natural powers of life, and are therefore only about half-alive, the other half being dead—dead while they live, besides the shortening of their lives by hastening death.
Again. Notice the process of breathing in yourself; and when unrestrained, you will see a full free expansion and contraction of the ribs, Lacing prevents that expansion of the chest which is natural in breathing, and by means of which alone air can be admitted into the lungs. This shows how it is that tight-lacing prevents breathing, and thus literally suffocates its fashionable victim. And now I appeal to every corseted woman, whether she does not, experience a sinking faintness, choaking for want of breath, a suffocating sensation, as though she would die; a panting for breath, which, carried much farther, would destroy life on the spot. It is this which occasions so many laced women to faint at church, or on occasions where the house is full, and the air therefore less pure. They obtain but little breath at all events, and that little heing impure, they faint for mere want of it, including also that want of circulating, caused by cramping the heart and arteries. And how quick a woman comes to herself, when her girt-strings are cut.
Tight-lacing violates another important physiological principle. Digestion is greatly facilitated by motion in the stomach. Indeed, without this motion, its functions soon become enfeebled, its conditions diseased, its product corrupt, and life itself consequently enfeebled, by the [???????] thereby engendered in the whole system. To render this motion constant, and thus perpetually to assist digestion, it is so arranged that every breath we draw presses downwards upon all the organs below the lungs, and thus imparts this much needed motion to the digestive apparatus. But tight-lacing girts in the lower portion of the lungs, and cuts off all that down ward movement naturally imparted by breathing
