repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but
of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you
fairly, crime--the sum of which will never be known till that great day
when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body,
whether they be good or evil.

I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe's 'Physiology,'
especially chapters iv. and vii.; and also to chapter x. of Madame de
Wahl's excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most
common causes of ill-filled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are
stillness, silence, and stays.

First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl is kept
for hours sitting on a form writing or reading, to do which she must lean
forward; and if her schoolmistress cruelly attempts to make her sit
upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did
not intend it, she is thereby doing her best to bring on that disease, so
fearfully common in girls' schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But
practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower
ribs are pressed into the body, thereby displacing more or less something
inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the
lungs, remains loose; the lungs are never properly filled or emptied; and
an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at the bottom of them. What
follows? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; heaviness of head;
depression of the whole nervous system under the influence of the poison
of the lungs; and when the poor child gets up from her weary work, what
is the first thing she probably does? She lifts up her chest, stretches,
yawns, and breathes deeply--Nature's voice, Nature's instinctive cure,
which is probably regarded as ungraceful, as what is called "lolling" is.
As if sitting upright was not an attitude in itself essentially