mptied cannot be again filled while the dress is
fastened. Therefore you are defrauded of your rightful amount of air,
and because part of the air is pressed out, the lungs take less space
and the dress seems looser. You can understand how that would be.

The trouble is that our dresses are usually fitted over empty lungs.
The dressmaker pulls the dress together, squeezes the air out of the
lungs, and fastens the dress. Now you can readily understand that it
will be impossible to fill those air-cells so long as the dress is
worn, and yet it may not seem uncomfortable, because we become
accustomed to it. Nature has made us so that we can accustom ourselves
to many things that are not absolutely healthful, but this should not
make us willing to live unhealthfully when it is possible to avoid
it.

CHAPTER VII.

ADDED INJURIES FROM TIGHT CLOTHING.

We have talked of the effect of tight clothing upon the breathing
power. Let us see what other injuries arise from wearing the dress too
tight. In the first place, the action of the heart is impeded. The
heart is a hollow muscle which must be continually filled with blood
and emptied again many times a minute from the moment of birth till
the moment of death. You have been lying down for an hour; let me
count your pulse. Now sit up for a few moments. I find, now, that it
beats faster. Now stand up, and it beats still faster. You see, it
increases continually as you get into the erect position. Now walk
quickly across the floor and you will see how much it has increased
again in rapidity.

You will realize how much the dress interferes with the action of the
heart better from an illustration. Professor Sargent made an
experiment with a number of girls. One day they were dressed in
perfectly loose clothing. He counted the pulse of each. It beat on the
average of eighty-four times in a minute. He had them run five hundred
and forty yards in the space of two and a half minutes. The pulse was
again counted. It had increased to one hundred and fifty-six beats in
a minute. This illustrates the effect of exercise even in loose
clothing. The next day at the same time, dressed with a corset which
reduced the waist to twenty-four inches, they ran the same distance in
the same length of time, and then he found that the pulse had run up
to one hundred and sixty-eight beats in a minute, showing how much
harder it was for the heart to do its work when restricted by tight
clothing