Breastbone

“ As her chemise was short sleeved, the grand magnificence and beauty of form of her splendid arms and neck, where the bubbies came out in all their perfection and brilliancy of skin, were fully displayed. As may be supposed, not a bone was to be traced in her upper neck, but all was dazzling in colour and flesh, which is such a beauty in woman. When a woman shows her gaunt collar bones, it is a proof of bad breeding, and a common nature. ”

“ Nearly all nurses carry the child on the left arm, rarely, if ever, changing to the right; and with the affectionate feeling inherent in every woman's breast, the nurse hugs the baby closely to her, thus keeping its right arm close to its chest, which is by this means pressed inward, thus diminishing its capacity, and at the same time throwing its body out of the centre of gravity. Add to this, that the child's head naturally sinks on the left shoulder, the muscles of the right side of the neck are elongated, those of the left side contracted, and an incipient distortion is the result. ”

“ A broad stripe is drawn from the back of the neck along the shoulders, and across the breasts, meeting in an acute angle in the hollow of the chest. The flesh is raised at least two lines from the level of the skin. Other stripes are drawn in curves along the back, and from the breast down on the abdomen. The legs and arms are tattooed all over, and their faces are literally cut to pieces. ”

“ The warm glow falls on the old woman's face, neck, and breast—a face worn away to a skeleton, with shrivelled skin and sunken eyes, red and watery with smoke, dust, and working by lamplight—a long goître neck, wrinkled and sinewy—a hollow breast covered with faded, ragged shawls. ”

“ GATHERED BREAST.—A healthy woman with a well-developed breast and a good nipple, scarcely, if ever, has a gathered bosom; it is the delicate, the ill-developed breasted and worse-developed nippled lady who usually suffers from this painful complaint. And why? The evil can generally be traced to girlhood. If she be brought up luxuriously, her health and her breasts are sure to be weakened, and thus to suffer, more especially if the development of the bosoms and nipples has been arrested and interfered with by tight stays and corsets. ”

“ After the dissection of the five Teguments, and the removal of the Muscles, as in the lower Belly, the Anatomist proceeds to lift up the Sternum or Breast-Bone, by separating it from the Ribs; then it is laid upon the Face, or else entirely taken away, to the end that the internal Parts of the Breast may be more clearly discover'd; whereupon immediately appear, the Heart, the Lungs, the Diaphragm, and the Mediastinum, which sticks to the Sternum throughout its whole length.
What is the Heart? ”

“ As the twig is bent so will the branch grow. We have seen that till the twentieth year of life some ribs are still imperfect, being soft at their joint-ends where resistance and motion occur. They are still growing. The breast-bone in front is in a similar condition. The slightest reflection, therefore, will make it evident that a perpetual pressure upon these parts from before and from behind must exercise a material influence in moulding the future form of the chest. ”

“ But it is wisely provided by nature, that when the child reposes upon its mother's arm it has its mouth directly applied to the nipple, which is turned outwards to receive it, whilst the lower part of the breast forms a cushion, upon which the cheek of the infant tranquilly reposes. ”

“ The habit of throwing the breast over the shoulder, in order to enable infants to nurse while swinging at their backs, contributes not a little to increase their deformity. Yet [Pg 288] some of the women, when very young, are said to be perfect models of beauty in the female form. Every joint and limb is well turned and proportioned, and the hands and feet are remarkably small and delicate, though they never wear shoes, or sandals. ”

“ Only second to the pelvis and its integuments as a secondary sexual character in woman we must place the breasts. [148] Among barbarous and civilized peoples the beauty of the breast is usually highly esteemed. Among Europeans, indeed, the importance of this region is so highly esteemed that the general rule against the exposure of the body is in its favor abrogated, and the breasts are the only portion of the body, in the narrow sense, which a European lady in full dress is allowed more or less to uncover. ”

“ Again, the breast-bone is composed of five pieces; the fifth coalesces with the fourth soon after puberty, and the fourth with the third between twenty and twenty-five years of age, whilst the body, or greater piece of the breast-bone is usually not completed by the junction of the third to the second before the thirty-fifth or fortieth year. In fact, the process of ossification is constantly going on in various important joints, and until that work of nature is settled, the full strength of manhood has not been attained ”

“ If through a surgical operation the breast from a male infant could be grafted in the proper place on a female infant, and the breast from a female infant on a male infant, the two individuals, as they became adult, would develop physically along the lines of his or her own sex except the grafted breast. That of the girl would remain flat, that of the boy would develop a mammary gland and become elevated into a mons. They each have on them a patch of the tissue of the opposite sex. In the passive invert there may exist one or more such patches from birth. ”

“ Resting the hand on the undrawn slide in the daylight, with the palm of the hand outward and toward the cathode, and about six inches away from it, the bones of the hand are thus brought in the nearest possible position to the sensitive plate. At the time of the present writing, the breast and the abdomen of the human body present too great thickness for successful photographs, and the attempts to obtain representations of the cavity in which the brain is situated have been failures, since the rays do not show any marked difference in fleshy tissues. ”

“ The cartilages of the ribs in front of the breast-bone ought to have full freedom to rise upward and advance forward at every inspiration, the diameter of the chest being naturally increased by every act of breathing. Any weight upon this portion of the human frame exerted when the bones are still growing, must necessarily tend to set the bones themselves in an unnatural direction. To maintain the vital capacity of the lungs, the capacity of the chest cavity from side to side must necessarily be increased ”

“ You can see at once that the restriction of the clothing comes just over the part of the body where there is the least resistance.”
“Oh, yes, I remember about the seven upper ribs, that are fastened to both spine and breast-bone; and the five lower ribs, that are fastened directly only to the spine and are attached in front to the breast-bone by cartilage; and the two floating ribs, lowest of all, and fastened only to the spine. I have often wondered why the important organs of the abdominal cavity should not have been better protected.” ”

“ The orbits of the eye—the eye-cap, or bone,—not too projecting, that it may not form a fatal obstacle in lambing. The neck of a medium length, thin towards the head, but enlarging towards the shoulders, where it should be broad and high, and straight in its whole course above and below. The breast should be wide, deep, and projecting forwards between the fore-legs, indicating a good constitution, and a disposition to thrive. ”

“ Breasts.—Changes in the breasts also constitute a sign of pregnancy. As an early symptom, there may be a feeling of fullness, sometimes pain. They become larger and firmer from the development of the individual lobules, which have an irregular knotty feel. A fat deposit takes place between the lobules and in the other parts of the breast. The nipples increase in size, are harder to the touch, become more prominent. A few drops of a turbid fluid, colostrum, may be pressed from the nipple as early as the third month. The veins under the skin become larger and more conspicuous. ”

“ Even when lying on your back, by stretching the limbs and expanding the chest such wrong tendencies or faults in standing can be corrected. The chest can be set free when it is constricted. When it is carried too low you can directly separate the breast-bone from the spine. By sympathetic expansions of the torso and by manipulating with the hands the parts that are especially constricted, curvatures, even in the back, can be improved.
In all cases in practicing expansion we should be careful that there is no increase in the curvature of the spine. ”

“ When five marks with the nails are made close to one another near the nipple of the breast, it is called "the jump of a hare."
(8) A mark made on the breast or on the hips in the form of a leaf of the blue lotus, is called the "leaf of a blue lotus."
When a person is going on a journey, and makes a mark on the thighs, or on the breast, it is called a "token of remembrance." On such an occasion three or four lines are impressed close to one another with the nails. ”

“ The arms, it will be seen, are crossed on the breast, upon which the chin is also bent; the thighs are close together, and brought against the Abdomen; the legs are close bent on the Thighs, and the feet are turned up against the front of the legs, the whole body being curved forward.
The position in which the Fœtus most usually lies in the Womb has already been shown, particularly in Plate XII, and in Plate XVI. The head is downwards, and the back part of it turned to the mother's left side. ”

“ When the head and breast half are to be cooked, the bone is not extracted, but the wings turned inside and the breast cavity filled with heated stones, and tied up with half of the skin of the legs, which have been divided, additional pieces of meat from the legs having been placed in the breast cavity. ”

“ Pelvis is broad and limbs loosely hung, as in a woman, and fingers and hands rather feminine in their general fineness of texture, comparative absence of hair, absence of prominent bones and veins, and the softness and pleasing tint of skin. Features are small like a woman's, but nose, lips, and ears large in proportion, indicating sensuality. I possess mammary glands and sacral dimples. While my breasts are as large as in some women, the nipples are small, even for a man. I am small-boned, of delicate build, and my muscular system is soft. ”

“ If we apply a foreign body against the breast or shoulder we shall feel it, but without having a single idea of its form, because the breast or shoulder touches but one side only. It is the same with respect to all other parts which cannot bend themselves round or embrace at one time many parts of foreign bodies. ”

“ The breast and haunches of the male and female are in inverse proportion—the chest being broad and the hips narrow in the former, the reverse in the latter; or, in other words, if a plumb-line be let fall from the points of the shoulders of both, the hips of the woman would project beyond the line, while those of the man would fall considerably within it. ”

“ And take it as a general maxim, that figures do not turn their heads straight with the chest, Nature having for our convenience formed the neck so as to turn with ease on every side, when the eyes want to look round; and to this the other joints are in some measure subservient. If the figure be sitting, and the arms have some employment across the body, the breast will turn over the joint of the hip. ”

“ The important form of a gathered breast I will now describe: A severe gathered bosom is always ushered in with a shivering fit. Let this fact be impressed deeply upon my reader’s mind. This shivering is either accompanied or followed by sharp lancinating pains of the bosom. The breast now greatly enlarges, becomes hot, and is very painful. The milk in the affected bosom either lessens or entirely disappears. If the child be applied to the breast (which he ought not to be) , it gives the mother intense pain. She is now feverish and ill; she loses her strength and appetite, and is very thirsty. ”

“ Not so with sickness arising from disease, or disordered condition of the stomach.
Shooting pains through—enlargement of—and other changes of the breast. When two months of pregnancy have been completed, an uneasy sensation of throbbing and stretching fulness is experienced, accompanied with tingling about the middle of the breasts, centring in the nipple. A sensible alteration in their appearance soon follows: they grow larger and more firm. The nipple becomes more prominent, and the circle around its base altered in color and structure, constituting what is called “the areola.” ”

“ The region in which are united the portion of the neck which we have just studied and the neighbouring part of the thorax—that is, the breast—has certainly, in our opinion, a form less expressive than the corresponding region in man. ”

“ She who has the largest and longest breasts, is reputed the greatest beauty; on which account, when they have attained to the age of seventeen or eighteen, and their breasts are somewhat grown, they tie a cord very tight around the middle of each breast, which presses very hard and breaks them, so that they hang down; and by pulling at these cords frequently, they grow longer and longer, till at length in some women they reach as low as the navel. ”

“ The mastoid processes of the female skull are smaller; the lower [401] jaw-bone is relatively smaller and lighter; the ribs are lighter and compressed; the spine is relatively longer; the collar and shoulder bones and the sternum [577] are smaller and lighter; there is a less pronounced angle in the femur, the neck of which approaches a right angle, while smallness of the patella in front and narrowness of the articulating surfaces of the tibia and femur, which in man form the lateral prominences, are said to make the knee-joint in women a sexual characteristic. ”

“ It is known also to the anatomist, that these same organs reside in an abode of their own, distinguished by the diaphragm from the abode of the other viscera of the body, and covered round by a covering of their own, which is called the pleura, and that they also constitute that part of the body which is called the breast. ”