The Evils of Fashionable Dress, by J. H. Kellogg, M.D., 1876

From J. H. Kellogg. The Evils of Fashionable Dress, and How to Dress Healthfully. Battle Creek, Mich.: The Office of the Health Reformer, 1876. 5-12.

The extravagance of fashionable dress, together with its almost total disregard of health and real comfort, have become so apparent to all sensible persons that few can be found who are willing to risk their reputation for soundness of mind by attempting to defend its absurdities. It would be an outrage against the intelligence of civilized womanhood to suppose that the devotees of fashion are ignorant of the fact that the daily homage which they pay to their goddess is at the expense of real physical comfort, and often of health and of life itself. The evils of improper dress have been so often exposed, and the sad results so faithfully depicted, that none can be in innocent ignorance. The shackles of a slavery worse than any political despotism holds one-half of civilized humanity in a durance more galling, more enervating, and more deplorable than Egyptian bondage, notwithstanding the stirring appeals which have been made by eminent physicians of their own sex, as well as others. . . .

Corsets and Tight-Lacing

Fig. 1 is a correct representation of the proportions of the female chest and waist as nature and

the Creator design it. Fig. 2 represents the same after it has been compressed and distorted by the ruthless hand of fashion by means of the corset, tight belts, and waist-bands. Let every woman consider carefully the injury which results from this artificial and totally unnatural constriction of the waist. . . .

The Corset a Cause of Consumption

How does compression affect these various organs and their functions? The corset, with its inflexible stays and hour-glass shape, grasps the expanding lungs at their lower part like an iron vise and prevents their proper filling with air. The lungs are thus crowded up into the upper part of the chest and are pressed against the projecting edges of the first ribs, upon which they move to and fro with the act of breathing. The friction thus produced occasions a constant irritation of the upper portion of the lung, which induces a deposit of tuberculous matter, and the individual becomes a prey to that dread disease, consumption--a sacrifice to a practice as absurd as pernicious. . . .

Tight-Laced Fissure of the Liver

We once found in Bellvue Hospital, New York City, a woman who was suffering under a complication of maladies which evidently had thier origin in the foolish practice of tight-lacing to which she had been addicted. On making an examination of the internal organs, we were amazed to find the liver presenting itself just above the hip bone, its normal position being enitrely above the lower border of the ribs. Further examination revealed the fact that in about the middle of the organ there was a constriction, or fissure, nearly dividing it in two, which had been produced by habitual lacing.