300 APPENDIX. 



and healthful aeration of the blood. From this cause 

 there would arise all the consequences which come from 

 living in a vitiated atmosphere, or from breathing air 

 which contains, perhaps, only one half the usual quanti- 

 ty of oxygen, as above explained. In such cases, it is 

 possible, thjit no other effect on the lungs themselves may 

 follow ; the subject gradually declining from general de- 

 bility, and such poverty of the blood as to allow of no 

 healthy secretions, and thus sink down to the grave with- 

 out the usual symptoms of pulmonary consumption. 

 Such may be said literally, " to die for want of breath ;" 

 not however, stopped by " the destroying" but the self- 

 destroying angel, if indeed angels ever assist on such 

 occasions. 



It is perhaps singular, that this state of the lungs often 

 betrays itself by an offensive breath, without ulceration, 

 a designed infliction, perhaps, on those who thus vio- 

 late nature's laws. But if nature is sometimes slow 

 in resenting, and avenging the insults offered her, 

 and allows some to live on for years who habitually vio- 

 late her laws, others are brought to speedy account for 

 such temerity ; for it is well known that blood-spitting, 

 hectic fever, and finally all the concomitants of consump- 

 tion of the lungs, follow excessive lacing, many of 

 which terminate in a short period. Healthy females, 

 who have no family predisposition, and who begin this 

 practice late in life, as from eighteen to twenty, are not 

 so apt to suffer as those who have such a predisposition, 

 and are laced from their childhood. 



In the former, however, the most pernicious conse- 

 quences sometimes follow, as where a fine healthy coun- 

 try girl, who never had been laced, happens to visit her 

 fashionable cousins in town ; and who of course, will not 

 be seen in the streets with her, in such a countrified 

 shape. The poor girl must therefore be literally screw- 

 ed into the city form, before she is allowed to " see com- 

 pany ;" and having perhaps a capacious chest, such as 

 nature formed, and this being composed of a bony frame- 

 work, it is impossible to bring it within the compass of 

 the fashionable mould, without lapping the ends of the 

 ribs either over or under the breast bone. 



