XX 

 FASHION IN DEFOKMITY 



AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CUSTOMS OF BARBAROUS AND 

 CIVILISED RACES 1 



"What I here present you with is an Enditement framed against most of the 

 Nations under the Sun ; whereby they are arraigned at the tribunal of Nature, 

 as guilty of High Treason, in Abasing, Counterfeiting, Defacing, and Clipping 

 her Coin instampt with her Image and Superscription on the Body of Man. 



J. BULWEE, AntfiropometamorpTiosis, 1650. 



THE propensity to deform, or alter from the natural form, 

 some part of the body is one which is common to human 

 nature in every aspect in which we are acquainted with it, 

 the most primitive and barbarous, and the most civilised and 

 refined. 



The alterations or deformities which it is proposed to 

 consider in this essay are those which are performed, not by 

 isolated individuals, or with definite motives, but by consider- 

 able numbers of members of a community, simply in imitation 

 of one another in fact, according to fashion, "that most 

 inexorable tyrant, to which the greater part of mankind are 

 willing slaves." 



Fashion is now often associated with change, but in less 

 civilised conditions of society fashions of all sorts are more 

 permanent than with us ; and in all communities such 

 fashions as those here treated of are, for obvious reasons, far 

 less likely to be subject to the fluctuations of caprice than 



1 The substance of this essay was delivered as a lecture at the Royal Institu- 

 tion of Great Britain, on the evening of Friday, 7th May 1880, and subsequently 

 published in the Proceedings of that body. It was republished as a separate work 

 with additional illustrations (Macmillan & Co., 1881). 



