Feb. 



1883.] 



KNO\A^LEDGE • 



69 



greyness of the shadows is improving, and there is no 

 unusual colour ; but lines nearer than distinct vision are 

 still doubled. By Oct 1 8 only a trace of enlargement re- 

 mained ; a very triHing ellipticity may, I believe, be the 

 normal condition of the pupil. 



Again, April 8, 1873, the other eye having accidentally 

 received a slight touch of atropine, and a similar distur- 

 bance having ensued, the spectroscope was found to show 

 some increase of intensity in the red, yellow, and yellow- 

 green. But the most remarkable and unexpected, though, 

 as it will be observed, not wholly unprecedented, result 

 was the greater obscurity of everything in a faint light, 

 such as that of a dark passage, the reverse of the etlect in 

 a strong one. Polarization produced no appreciable dif- 

 ference. 



I may add that my eye is very tolerant of bright light 

 I have repeatedly in youth gazed directly at the sun ; and 

 once did so for a few moments with (I believe) a 3 J inch 

 achrnniatic at the Radclifle Oliservatory (O.xford) ; but I 

 should now think such experiments wrong, though they did 

 not appear to produce any bad result. On the other hand, 

 perhaps as a natural consequence, I am seldom successful 

 in picking up very minute points of light 



AccoRDlxo to !Mr. Traill, the engineer of the Giant's 

 Causeway and Portrush electric tramway, the total priuie 

 cost will be about £il 1,000 for six and a half miles of 

 tramway, the cost of buildings, rolling stock, electric plant, 

 engines, law, parliamentary, and engineering expenses. 

 He says also that the electric car is able to ascend a long 

 continuous hill of about one and a half miles in length, 

 and with a gradient of 1 in 3.3, drawing a second car 

 behind it, and work as readily and as well at a distance 

 of two miles from the generator as adjacent to it 



The new ship canal proposed to be cut between the 

 Baltic and the Isorth Sea will save nearly 600 miles of the 

 water journey now made around the Danish peninsula. 

 The cut will be from CJluckstadt to Kiel, and the length 

 will be about half that of the Suez Canal, or some tifty 

 miles. 



The Overland Summary (Calcutta, Dec. 2G) s.ays that 

 the line of railway up to the Akoch side of the Indus has 

 now been completed, and is ready for use. On the other 

 side, the tunnel under the hill of Rajah Hoir has been 

 bored through, and will soon be finished, while the bridge 

 across the Indus is being rapidly proceeded with ; so that 

 it is hoped that trains will run to Peshawur without a 

 break by May 1, 1883. 



The total quantity of coal brought into London by 

 railway and canal in December was 614,087 tons, against 

 618,889 tons last year. Of these 614,087 tons, the North- 

 Western carried 140,123 tons; the Great Northern 

 88,676; Great Western, 11.3,032; Midland, 194,926; 

 Great Eastern, 69,928; South-Western, 5,063; South- 

 Eastem, 1,767 ; and the Grand Junction Canal, 570 tons. 



A Curious Effect of Lishtxixg. — At the Puy-de- 

 D6me Observatory, in France, some singular effects of 

 lightning discharge have been noticed on the copper cups 

 of a Robinson's anemometer mounted on the roof. The 

 surface of the metal is curiously pitted, and from the centre 

 of each pit rises a small cone or nipple of copper, smoothly 

 polished, as if it had been turned in a lathe. These cones 

 of fusion produced by the electric discharge remind one 

 forcibly of the carbon points in an electric lamp, and indi- 

 cate, as we have before remarked, a gyratory movement of 

 the electric current. — Enginf-ring. 



HEALTH OF CORSETED WOMEX.* 



By Dr. D. Lewis. 



MANY physicians engaged in general practice have 

 been asked what proportion of their practice comes 

 of displacement of the pelvic viscera. Their average testi- 

 mony is that more than half of their professional business 

 conies of this one malady. 



A letter just recei% ed from the most able specialist in 

 the treatment of diseases of women known to the writer 

 (a professor in a prominent medical college) contains the 

 following language : " I am sure, without being able to 

 demonstrate it, that 90 per cent, of the so-called female 

 weaknesses have their origin in corsets and heavy skirts. 

 They not only depress the pelvic organs by their pressure 

 and weight, but weaken all of their normal etlbrts." 

 A number of experi' need practitioners in this depart- 

 ment of niidicine, hearing of the preparation of this 

 paper, ha\e written letters expressing the same decided 

 opinion. 



But may not a corset be worn so loose as to do no 

 harm ? If by a corset, a machine with steel, whalebones, 

 or other stiffenings be meant, the answer is " No ! " The 

 corset is hard and stiff, while that portion of the body 

 which it surrounds is particularly soft and Uexible. If the 

 wean-r could always stand erect, with the corset so loose as 

 not to touch her, no harm would be done. But she 

 must sometimes sit, when the parts under the corset 

 are greatly enlarged. Bending forward, as in sewing 

 or reading, she leans against the upper ends of the 

 whalebones, and then the pressure against the upper ends 

 is returned against the abdomen at the lower end. If the 

 wearer will put her hand under the lower end of her corset 

 while she leans forward against the upper end, she 

 will lie surprised at the pressure. This pressure upon the 

 abdonifn, during all the long hours of sitting, does serious 

 mischief. In one word, it may be added that, with every 

 bending of the body, even the very loose corset is brought 

 in contact with yielding parts. The floating ribs — that 

 masterpiece of the human mechanism — and those soft parts 

 of the person covered by the corset, cannot perform the 

 undulating and vital movements incident to respiration and 

 digestion, even under a very loose corset. Then what must 

 we say of a corset which is not loose ? 



The corset does more than squeeze the waist After 

 forcing a considerable part of what belongs within the 

 waist downward into a lower part of the abdomen, to 

 prevent an unseemly protuberance, the corset is so con- 

 trived as to spread over all that lower part, force it 

 down, and, with a firm layer of steel or whalebone, 

 hold it there. This presses the abdominal viscera down 

 upon the organs in the pelvis. Then, to end this tragedy 

 with a farce, people put on serious faces, and wonder why 

 women suffer from prolapsus uteri. 



A numerous and busy class of medical specialists are 

 devoted to the treatment of malpositions of the organs in 

 the lower part of woman's abdomen. These malpositions 

 are, directly and indirectly, the source of a large part of 

 her ill-health and sufferings. Is it unreasonable to say 

 that a pressure about the middle of the body, which 

 reduces the waist from 3 to 15 in., must push what is 

 within the waist downward, and must inevitably produce 

 those malpositions of the organs at the bottom 1 Can a 

 sane woman imagine any other result? 



A GIRL WHO HAS INDULGED IN TIGHT LACING SHOULD NOT 



MARRY. She may be a very devoted wife, but her husband 

 will secretly regret his marriage. Physicians of experience 



^ Isorth American lleview. 



