INTRODUCTORY.
25
pear, who should teach the coming woman how, in pharmaceutical phrase, to fit, put on, wear, and take off her dress, —
“ Cito, Tuto, et Jucunde.”
Corsets that embrace the waist with a grip that tightens respiration into pain, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman.
Let the statement be emphasized and reiterated until it is heeded, that woman’s neglect of her own organization, though not the sole explanation and cause of her many weaknesses, more than any single cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible, breeds the germs