390 Professor Flower [May 7, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 7, 1880. 

 Thomas Boycott, M.D. F.L.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



William Henry Flower, LL.D. F.R.S. P.Z.S. &c. 



Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Royal College of Surgeons of 



England. 



FasJiion in Deformity. 



I HAVE to ask your attention this evening to certain outward mani- 

 festations of a propensity common to human nature in every aspect in 

 which we are acquainted with it — the most primitive and barbarous, 

 and the most civilized and refined — but one which is, as far as I 

 know, peculiar to human nature. 



I shall speak of deformity in the sense of alteration of the natural 

 form of any part of the body, and those cases of voluntary deformation 

 will be considered which are performed, not by isolated individuals, 

 or with special motives, but by considerable numbers of members of 

 a community in imitation of one another — in fact, according to fasMorij 

 " that most inexorable tyrant to which the greater part of mankind 

 are willing slaves." 



Fashion is now often associated with change, but in more primi- 

 tive communities fashions of all sorts are more permanent than with 

 us ; and in all communities such fashions as those I am now speak- 

 ing of are, for obvious reasons, far less likely to be subject to the 

 fluctuations of caprice than those affecting the dress only, which, even 

 in Shakespeare's time, changed so often that " the fashion wears out 

 more apparel than the man." Alterations once made in the form of the 

 body cannot be discarded or modified in the lifetime of the individual, 

 and therefore as fashion is intrinsically imitative, such alterations 

 have the strongest possible tendency to be reproduced generation 

 after generation. 



The origins of these fashions are mostly lost in obscurity, all 

 attempts to solve them being little more than guesses. Some of them 

 have become associated with religious or superstitious observances, 

 and so have been spread and perjietuated ; some have been vaguely 

 thought to be hygienic in motive ; most have some relation to con- 

 ventional standards of improved personal appearance ; but whatever 

 their origin, the desire to conform to common usage, and not to 

 appear singular, is the prevailing motive which leads to their con- 

 tinuance. 



The most convenient classification of these customs will be one 



