Talks About Health by Dio Lewis

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 5, 1863

Talks About Health.

By Dio Lewis

ANOTHER WORD ABOUT DRESS.

He who would labor for the physical redemption of woman in America must begin with her dress. The prevailing modes constitute an insuperable obstacle to her physical devlopment. Every humane physiologist has argued, expostulated, and implored. If American women should squeeze their feet until those members were in Chinese fashion, or should place a flat stone on the head until the brains were forced into the back of the neck, we might keep silent; but while they compress that part of the body which contains the organs of vitality—the heart, lungs, liver, and stomach—we must continue to resist their madness. In this part of the body is the fountain of life. The slightest pressure immediately reduces the size and activity of that fountain. He who has thoughtfully studied the inevitable results of the prevailing style of dress at the waist, will affect no surprise at those cold feet, that constipation, weak spine, short breath, palpitation of the heart, and congestive headache, which are the average characteristics of the health of American women. Given a live woman, a corset, the average tight dress, and the physiologist will deduce the morbid conditions I have named.

Near my institution in Boston, are three shops—a rum-shop, a candy-shop, and a corset-shop. I do not know which is the greatest evil.

My practical suggestion is that, without corsets, the dress-waist should be full and loose; the skirt-bands buttoned about the waist much larger than the body, supported on the shoulders by suspenders, such as gentlemen wear, and attached to the bands at the same points. My own wife adopted many years ago the style I advise, and is greatly delighted with the results. The dress is more artistic and beautiful than the plain waist with the hard, ironlike ligature at the band. After twenty years' study of the subject of health, and the causes of disease, if I were permitted to select from our one hundred and one physiological blunders that one which I should most desire to see corrected, I should unhesitatingly name this feature of female dress. Dio Lewis. M. D.