DRESS IN RELATION TO HEALTH. 185 



this time, though it be better than it once was, few things designate 

 classes and keep up distinctions of classes so much as the clothes that 

 are worn, the badges, I had almost said, of the wearers. The costumes 

 of the trim shopman, the slovenly mechanic, the country laborer, the 

 flourishing squire, the tight-laced soldier, the club exquisite, the lugu- 

 brious doctor, the devil-may-care artist, and the awful ecclesiastic in 

 his demented hat and sacred pinafore these costumes and others 

 betray a want of national taste and national unity which I for one, 

 health-seeker as I would be, utterly repudiate. There can be no amal- 

 gamation of mind and heart while these distinctive outside declara- 

 tions exist among us. In robes of office, during periods of office, men 

 may well be distinctively clad. On the bench, at the bar, in the pul- 

 pit, in the professor's chair, such costumes are classically graceful and 

 usefully distinctive, while in the workshop or other place of business a 

 particular outer dress suited to the occupation is no doubt necessary ; 

 but for ordinary intercourse something in common in the way of dress 

 were surely, in these advanced days, the thing to cultivate. 



I pass now to the first head of my subject proper : Dress in rela- 

 tion to its mechanical adaptation to the body. 



I. The first and most serious mechanical error committed on the 

 body by dress is that of tightness, by which pressure is brought to 

 bear upon some particular part. Presuming that an equable general 

 pressure, not extreme in its character, and including the whole body, 

 were applied for fitting purposes, that is to say, for the purpose of 

 indicating outline, no great evil probably would follow from the ap- 

 plication of such pressure, provided that it were so adapted as to give 

 with the growth, to yield a certain measure of elasticity, and to permit 

 perfect freedom of motion. A little more, perhaps, may be admitted 

 even than this. In advanced life, when the shape of the body becomes 

 irregular, and when the weight of those parts drags on the rest of the 

 body, clothing specially adapted to those parts, and surrounding them 

 with close and even pressure, gives useful and effective support, add- 

 ing greatly at the same time, it may be, to the appearance of the 

 body. These are exceptional conditions requiring exceptional man- 

 agement. 



That kind of pressure to which objection must be most determi- 

 nately taken is where the pressure is used, not for giving support to the 

 body, nor for sustaining natural outline, but for the express purpose 

 of producing an entirely artificial shape and outline. It is astonishing 

 how resolutely the advanced professors of medicine, in all times in 

 which they have written, have denounced the practice of compressing 

 the body in the stages of its growth for the purpose of molding it into 

 some unnatural form incident to fashion. It is equally astonishing to 

 find how resolutely the votaries of the fashion have resisted the teach- 

 ings of the learned, who may be said never to have made a single 

 point in advance toward a practical victory. Now and then fashion 



