the honors and prizes went to the
non-corset-wearers. McBride, in bringing forward this fact, pertinently
remarks, "If the wearing of a single style of dress will make this
difference in the lives of young women, and that, too, in their most
vigorous and resistive period, how much difference will a score of
unhealthy habits make, if persisted in for a life-time?"[30]

"It seems evident," A.E. Giles concludes ("Some Points of
Preventive Treatment in the Diseases of Women," _The Hospital_,
April 10, 1897) "that dysmenorrhoea might be to a large extent
prevented by attention to general health and education. Short
hours of work, especially of standing; plenty of outdoor
exercise--tennis, boating, cycling, gymnastics, and walking for
those who cannot afford these; regularity of meals and food of
the proper quality--not the incessant tea and bread and butter
with variation of pastry; the avoidance of overexertion and
prolonged fatigue; these are some of the principal things which
require attention. Let girls pursue their study, but more
leisurely; they will arrive at the same goal, but a little
later." The benefit of allowing free movement and exercise to the
whole body is undoubtedly very great, both as regards the sexual
and general physical health and the mental balance; in order to
insure this it is necessary to avoid heavy and constricting
garments, more especially around the chest, for it is in
respiratory power and chest expansion more than in any other
respect that girls fall behind boys (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis,
_Man and Woman_, Ch. IX). In old days the great obstacle to the
free exercise of girls lay in an ideal of feminine behavior which
involved a prim restraint on every natural movement of the body.
At the present day that ideal is not so fervently preached as of
old, but its traditional influence still to some extent persists,
while there is the further difficulty that adequate time and
opportunity and encouragement are by no means generally afforded
to girls for the cultivation and training of the romping
instincts which are really a serious part of education, for it is
by such free exercise of the whole body that the neuro-muscular
system, the basis of all vital activity, is built up. The neglect
of such education is to-day clearly visible in the structure of
our women. Dr. F. May