140 GOOD HEALTH 



Any man, woman, or child can see that every tube of 

 the lungs ought to be kept open so that the air may go 

 in and out easily and give the blood a chance to get all 

 the oxygen it needs; yet I have seen girls who looked 

 as if they had never read a book on hygiene in their 

 lives, for they dressed as if they did not know they had 

 any lungs. You can tell such a girl at a glance. As a 

 rule her waist is very small. 



Some people used to think that a small waist made 

 a woman look delicate and beautiful, but in these days 

 we are sure that it makes her look ignorant and out of 

 shape. We think so because we know what she has 

 done to the inside of her body. She has squeezed up 

 hundreds and thousands of air tubes and air sacs until 

 they are like a useless sponge. When that happens, 

 neither the lungs nor the blood can possibly get as 

 much air as they need. 



The worst of it is that the less air our lungs get the 

 easier it is for them to become diseased. When every 

 air sac is full of air, the blood takes the oxygen out of 

 it as fast as possible ; it also leaves its load of carbon 

 dioxid there in place of the oxygen. 



There are, then, two things that the lungs do for us all 

 the time : they take oxygen into the body with the air 

 for the blood to use, and they send carbon dioxid out of 

 the body because the blood is through with it. 



