Lectures to women on anatomy and physiology : with an appendix on water cure / by Mary S. Gove.

  • Mary Nichols
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures to women on anatomy and physiology : with an appendix on water cure / by Mary S. Gove. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the result of ignorance. I have not yet noticed that fruitful source of death, tight lacing, upon which so much has been said within the last few years. I do not say knowledge would reform all who indulge in this ruinous practice ; but let knowl- edge be disseminated, and we have good reason to believe that we have moral principle enough in our land, when influenced by knowledge, to work wonders for our race. Those who are not influ- enced by a sense of duty will fear and tremble when made sensible of the dreadful effects result- ing from compression. Mothers should teach their children to regard tight lacing as dishonorable and criminal, and that it is as much at variance with beauty and propor- tion as it really is. But mothers not only neglect to learn their own anatomy, and thus neglect to teach their children, for the plain reason that they can not teach what they do not know, but they lace themselves in a deadly manner, and make the clothing of their children, from infancy, so tight as to obstruct the circulation. Thus they commence the work of death from the cradle. I have known an ignorant, yet in many respects amiable mother, who made the clothes of her little daughter, only three years old, so tight that she could not bear to have them hooked only when in company. Think ye this mother would willfully murder her child ] Far from it. But fashion was the mother's tyrant; and though this child was her darling, the object of her unceasing care, yet she dared not do otherwise than yield obedience to fashion. Let us not con- demn her until we examine our own habits, and see if we are not in some way the slaves of this un- merciful deity that the world has exalted. People should be awakened to a consciousness that there are duties that they owe to themselves