O. S. Fowler

“ To you, industrious and intelligent young men, I appeal to raise your voice and combine your influence with mine and with other labourers in this good cause, to arrest so crying an evil, so fatal a fashion; lest your own wives break your hearts by dying in the prime of their days, and your children redouble the agony of this bereavement by dying in your arms, to be buried with their mothers. ”

“ Besides, tight-lacing allows so scanty a supply to the child, as often to prevent its entering the world alive, or else to hasten its time. But even if it do live to be born, and its mother live to bear it, it is so sickly, so feeble, that a trifling exposure nips the tender bud in its germ, or causes it to drag out the miserable existence of an invalid.
To every man who prefers burying his children to the trouble or expense of raising them, I say, marry a small waist, and you will be sure to have few mature offspring, and those few thinned out by death. ”

“ Let the heart send the blood, thus thoroughly vitalized, bounding and rushing through all parts of the system, even to the ends of the fingers and toes, imparting health, energy, power, spontaneous action, to every muscle, nerve, the brain included. Let the digestion be perfect, Let food never trouble you. Let it fill up your person, make perfect chyle, perfect blood. Let, in short, all the vital organs be fully developed, be healthy, be vigorous, so that your supply of vitality is abundant, and a flow of healthy, happy feeling thrills throughout your whole frame. Disease keeps aloof. ”

“ Now what effect has tight-lacing on beauty? A most pernicious one—­always, necessarily. You think it makes you handsome! But, think you that the wasp-like waist is in itself more beautiful than the waist given by nature? Think you that girting the waist can improve the beauty of the works of God? How would Venus de Medicis look with a little pent up waist? As well pinch up or destroy any other portion of the system, and then call it handsome! Nature is always beautiful; nature distorted is always homely. ”

“ But vigour of lungs and stomach both fill out and also redden the cheeks, and hence promote beauty. But tight-lacing has been shown to destroy both. One reason why marriage impairs the beauty, is because it impairs the health. But not to dwell here. I take the broad ground—a ground supported by both observation and science—that no woman having an artificial waist can be handsome. Tight-lacing would make Venus herself homely—will make any woman homely, tame and uninteresting, by making her thin, spare, scrawny, and haggard in appearance. ”

“ This diseased action of the brain is usually called craziness, or insanity. How beautiful, how philosophical an exposition of the almost universal fact that those who have laced so tight as to disease the blood, are crazy. ”

“ Clothe yourselves in the garb of natural beauty, and remember that you are born, not to court and please, not to be courted and pleased by, fashionable rowdies, but to become wives and mothers—not to glitter at a ball, nor to promenade Broadway gaily dressed, but to make home a paradise, and a family happy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Look at the same woman, or upon two women, alike except that the waist of the one shall be distorted and her motions cramped by corsets, and the other free, her motions natural, easy and graceful, and then tell me if a naturally full waist, rendered small artificially, is not a deformity?
But, this is but a small part of the reason why lacing renders a woman homely. Can a poor, scrawny, pale-faced, spare-featured ghastly-looking woman, possibly be handsome? ”

“ One end of woman's existence is offspring; and who does not know that the constitution and health of the child depend upon those of the mother; and especially, upon an ample development of these vital organs. The nourishment of the child, before and after birth, is a leading condition of a good mother in her capacity as mother. If she have too little vitality to sustain her own brain and muscles—a point already shown—how can she have a surplus for her infant? ”

“ They furnish vitality. They impart that animal life, that physical vigour, required by every muscle, by every nerve, by the brain, by all portions of the body to sustain them in action. With­out this vitality they die instanter. With it but sparingly supplied, the brain, the muscles droop, become inert and die. Lassitude, general weakness, fatigue, a permanent faintness or sinking of spirit, together with this whole class of feelings, grow out of the feebleness of these organs. ”

“ Bright thoughts flit like meteors across their mental horizon only to vanish in midnight darkness. And if tardy sleep at last folds them in his unwilling arms, frightful dreams disturb their shallow slumbers, till they awake enshrouded in deep melancholy and inpenetrable gloom. They feel most keenly only to feel most wretchedly. ”

“ If the digestion be bad, the blood is of course imperfect, or perhaps loaded with disease; for when food lies long in the stomach without being digested, it ferments, that is decays or rots, and thus engenders vast quantities of corruption, which, entering the blood, carry disease to all portions of the system, escaping by slow degrees through the lungs, and by insensible perspiration. Hence the importance of having good food, and that perfectly digested; and, when digestion is imperfect, of restoring it again to powerful and healthy action. ”

“ I call upon you in the name of our race, I even command you in the name of violated justice and virtue, that you no longer require this self-sacrifice, this offering up of chastity, this destruction of your race, at the hand of fashionable woman.
3 To you, ye tight-lacers, I appeal! Will you not break away from the shackles of these fashionable libertines whose main end is to ruin you? Will you not turn your eyes and hearts from the fashionable to the industrious—from rakes to the virtuous; from beasts to men ”

“ No tongue can tell the number of mothers and children killed out­right, or else made to drag out a short and miserable existence, by that accursed practice of tight-lacing. Most effectually does it cramp, and girt in, and deaden the vital apparatus, and thus stop the flow of vitality at its fountain head, killing its thousands before they marry, and so effectually weakening others, as indirectly, though effectually, to cause the death of tens of thousands, aye, of millions more. ”

“ Sometimes they are elated beyond measure, and filled with ecstasy; and anon they are plunged into the very depths of despair by some trifle, too insignificant to affect a healthy brain; for their sensibilities are morbidly alive to every thing. They retire to their couch, but not to sleep. The boiling blood courses through their brain, and their labouring pulsations shake their very frame. They think and feel intensely upon every thing, only to in­crease the disease, and aggravate their mental sufferings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The second great function of life affected by tight-lacing, is the Nervous System and Brain—that portion of the body called into action in the manufacture and exercise of feeling, thought, sensation—that portion of us for which all others were made, and which lives and is, and which constitutes the most exalted function of our nature, as well as the end and object of our existence. All our pleasures are experienced by its instrumentality, and are connected with its normal, healthy action ”

“ Beauty is always ac­ ompanied by a plump person, and a ruddy cheek. But sickness always impairs the beauty; and death, by rendering the cheeks sunken and the looks haggard, destroys true beauty. And for this reason. A full cheek and a plump person indicate health; and this, a full supply of that animal vigour on which life and happiness depend. Now, lacing impairs the health, and diminishes the action of the lungs and stomach. This enfeebles vitality and invites death, and thus effaces beauty. Beauty cannot exist without health and a fresh countenance, and they cannot exist with tight-lacing. ”

“ But why does woman insist upon perpetuating so painful, so self-­torturing, as well as immoral and injurious a practice? What-all-­powerful, all-prevading motive prompts this self-sacrifice, this self-­immolation upon the altar of fashion? Does woman require this pain­ful fashion at the hand of woman, or do gentlemen require it? ”

“ If you wish to exclaim under a burden of nervousness and mental distress which you cannot support, 'O wretched life that I live!'—if you wish to break the heart of your husbands and friends by your premature death, and have your own souls pierced through with indescribable anguish by the death of your children; if you wish to die while you live, and to die finally before your time; if you wish every sensible man that sees you to think 'how foolish, how wicked, that woman is ”

“ Medical men have not appreciated the importance of equality, or proportion, of circulation in the different parts. The absence of this uni­formity in the circulation, is one of the main causes of disease; and restoring it, will cure most diseases. A moment's reflection and a little observation, will convince everyone of the importance of this principle, and also show how wofully it is violated by tight-lacing. ”

“ Life is also extinguished sooner by a blow on the pit of the stomach than on any other part, the head not excepted, and the blood in such cases, instead of coagulating, remains liquid, all showing that these internal organs are the fountain and centre of animal life. All aged, all eminently talented persons, will be found to possess amply developed chests; and all consumptive and short-­lived families, to have narrow chests. All grand-mothers will be found to have large waists; for, without that ample stock of vitality furnished thereby, they cannot live to become grand-mothers. ”

“ It bears as strongly in favour of tight-lacing, as your corset-strings do upon your waists! Do you really suppose your Saviour thinks any the more of you for being corseted.? Then why do it, especially when you go to sing his praises and to engage in his worship? What possible motive, drawn from religion, can a pious woman have for tight-lacing? No more than she can have for taking arsenic! Tight-lacing is incom­patible with Christianity, or else I do not understand either its precepts or its principles. ”

“ They feel burthened with they know not what, but this only aggravates their oppression. Things, otherwise their joy, become their tormentors, and every sweet is rendered bitter. Their nervous energies are wrought up to the highest pitch of inflamed action, and yet they have no strength to stand this preternatural excitement. ”

“ Those who keep up their physical tone and vigour, will be sprightly and interesting, and even though they may be homely, yet their animation, their freshness, and wide-awake appearance, and glowing cheeks, will make a far deeper impression than laced but sickly beauty. ”

“ If your wives are so destitute of physiological knowledge, and so full of fashionable foolery, and, withal, so anxious to marry off your daughters, as to make them follow this pernicious fashion in order to make a match, do you interpose a father's counsel; (and, if your daughters have been duly trained, your advice alone will be sufficient;) and caution them not to marry any one who likes them a whit the better for tight-lacing; for such a husband will never support them or make them happy. ”

“ Another evident object of the ladies in their lacing and padding, is to make themselves, not the better, but the more handsome; yet corsets destroy the very beauty which they are employed to impart; for beauty depends upon health, which tight-lacing impairs, thereby rendering them scrawny and pale, (nor can rogue supply the place of the rosy cheek of health,) besides shortening the period of youth. Air and exercise are the best means of promoting health, and of improving the beauty. ”

“ The law that governs them is, constant action, or else disease, Nothing is more fatal to the lungs, than that inaction which tight-lacing always and necessarily induces. This, and the pressing together of their pores, which inspirations would keep apart, causes adhesions, and these inflammation, and this, ulcerations. Scarcely any one cause of consumption is more prolific. And yet, its victims are said to die of consumption, when in fact they die of lacing. It is just as bad as though they committed suicide by strangling themselves. ”

“ The chests of-lived persons, and of hale, hearty families, will always be found to be deep, ample and expansive; their shoulders broad, waists large, and persons stocky; but those who die young, unless of accident or some acute inflammatory disease, as well as sickly, delicate, feeble children and invalids, will be found to be slim-built, narrow and shallow chested, small round the waist, and poorly developed in the abdomen: as are most who are afflicted with dispepsia, liver-complaint, scrofula, weakness, palpitation of the heart, consumption, and this whole class of diseases. ”

“ If there be one self-contradiction or anomaly greater than another, it is a Miss Religious Small-Wajst. I do not certainly know but there might possibly be such a thing as a Christian drunkard, or a religious rascal, or a praying cheat and liar; but I really do not see how it is possible for tight-lacers ever to enter the kingdom of heaven. If so, it must be 'so as by fire.' To lace tight is to commit suicide and infanticide, as already shown; and can suicides and infanticides be Christians! ”