PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF IMPROPER DRESS.
By Ellen G. White
WOMEN are subject to serious maladies, and their sufferings are greatly increased by their manner of dress. Instead of preserving their health for the trying emergencies that are sure to come, they, by their wrong habits, too often sacrifice not only health, but life, and leave to their children a legacy of wo, in a ruined constitution, perverted habits, and false ideas of life. One of fashion's wasteful and mischievous devices is the skirt that sweeps the ground. Uncleanly, uncomfortable, inconvenient, unhealthful,—all this and more is true of the trailing skirt. It is extravagant, both because of the superfluous material required, and because of the needless wear on account of its length. And whoever has seen a woman in a trailing skirt, with hands filled with parcels, attempt to go up or down stairs, to enter a railway train, to walk through a crowd, to walk through the rain, or on a muddy road, needs no other proof of its inconvenience and discomfort. Its weight makes it unhealthful. Besides, as it gathers dampness from the dew, the rain, or the snow, it chills the ankles, which are often insufficiently clad, and thus causes colds or more serious illness. Even worse is its uncleanness. Dragging through the filth of the street, it is a collector of poisonous, deadly germs. Many a death from diphtheria, tuberculosis, or other contagious diseases, has been caused by the germs brought on a trailing skirt into the home. Another serious evil is the wearing of skirts so that their weight must be sustained by the hips. This heavy weight, pressing upon the internal organs, drags them downward, and causes weakness of the stomach, and a feeling of lassitude, inclining the wearer to stoop, which further cramps the lungs, making correct breathing more difficult. Of late years the dangers resulting from compression of the waist have been so fully discussed that few can be ignorant in regard to them; yet so great is the power of fashion that the evil continues. By this practise women and young girls are doing themselves untold harm. It is essential to health that the chest have room to expand to its fullest extent, so that the lungs may be enabled to take full inspirations. Compression, by making it impossible to take a full breath, leads to the injurious habit of breathing with a part of the lungs only. When the lungs are restricted, the quantity of oxygen received into them is lessened. The blood is not properly vitalized, and the waste, poisonous matter which should be thrown off through the lungs is retained. In addition to this, the circulation is hindered; and the internal organs, cramped and crowded out of place, can not perform their work properly. Tight lacing does not improve the form. One of the chief elements in physical beauty is symmetry, the harmonious proportion of parts. And the correct model for physical development is to be found, not in the lay-figures displayed by French modistes, but in the human form as developed according to the laws of God in nature. God is the Author of all beauty, and only as we conform to His ideal shall we approach the standard of true beauty.