Corsets that embrace the waist with a grip that tightens respiration
into pain, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal
burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless
invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that
breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman.

Let the statement be emphasized and reiterated until it is heeded,
that woman's neglect of her own organization, though not the sole
explanation and cause of her many weaknesses, more than any single
cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits
and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by
dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of
herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible,
breeds the germs of diseases that in later life yield torturing or
fatal maladies. Every physician's note-book affords copious
illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer
has seen prompted this imperfect essay upon a subject in which the
public has a most vital interest, and with regard to which it acts
with the courage of ignorance.

Two considerations deserve to be mentioned in this connection. One is,
that no organ or function in plant, animal, or human kind, can be
properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through
ignorance or misdirection, it may limit or enfeeble the animal or
being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is
either in itself a source of power and grace to its parent stock, or a
necessary stage in the development of larger grace and power. The
female organization is no exception to this law; nor are the
particular set of organs and their functions with which this essay has