THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



extraordinary fashioning of female attire tends to place 

 women at a disadvantage as regards the securing of an 

 adequate air-supply. In saying this I would not be 

 understood as viewing with fanatical eye the subject 

 of corsetting. I am thoroughly aware that a vast num- 

 ber of women maintain a fair measure of health and 

 attain a good old age notwithstanding they have kept 

 their lungs constricted by moderate lacing every day of 

 their lives. 



In this as in so many other instances, the organism 

 proves itself marvelously adaptive and wondrously 

 resistent to abusive treatment. 



Yet no one who understands the physiological role of 

 oxygen can doubt that to restrict the air-supply is to aim 

 a blow at the proper activities of all the tissues and 

 organs of the body; and it does seem rather a pity that 

 the sex which is striving so valiantly and in many 

 ways so successfully to demonstrate its intellectual 

 fitness for high tasks, should stubbornly refuse to let 

 common sense guide it to the removal of so obvious a 

 physiological obstacle. 



It is gratifying, on the other hand, to recall that the 

 physiology of breathing is now taught pretty generally 

 in our elementary schools, so that the average youth of 

 fourteen knows more about the subject than the wisest 

 physician could know in the days of our grandparents. 

 Doubtless the universal diffusion of information on this 

 all-important subject will in due course have an ap- 

 preciable effect upon the health and happiness of the 

 average members of our race. 



In the meantime any individual who so chooses may 



[32] 



