Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 16

{97}

How to Keep the Bloom and Grace of Youth.

THE SECRET OF ITS PRESERVATION.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. WM. MCKINLEY.]

1. The question most often asked by women is regarding the art of retaining, with advancing years, the bloom and grace of youth. This secret is not learned through the a.n.a.lysis of chemical compounds, but by a thorough study of nature's laws peculiar to their s.e.x. It is useless for women with wrinkled faces, dimmed eyes and blemished skins to seek for external applications of beautifying balms and lotions to bring the glow of life and health into the face, and yet there are truths, simple yet wonderful, whereby the bloom of early life can be restored and retained, as should be the heritage of all G.o.d's children, sending the light of beauty into every woman's face. The secret:

2. Do not bathe in hard water; soften it with a few drops of ammonia, or a little borax.

3. Do not bathe the face while it is very warm, and never use very cold water.

4. Do not attempt to remove dust with cold water; give your face a hot bath, using plenty of good soap, then give it a thorough rinsing with warm water.

5. Do not rub your face with a coa.r.s.e towel.

6. Do not believe you can remove wrinkles by filling in the crevices with powder. Give your face a Russian bath every night; that is, bathe it with water so hot that you wonder how you can bear it, and then, a minute after, with moderately cold water, that will make your face glow with warmth; dry it with a soft towel.

* * * * * {98}

Form and Deformity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MALE. FEMALE.

Showing the Difference in Form and Proportion.]

1. PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES.--Masquerading is a modern accomplishment. Girls wear tight shoes, burdensome skirts, corsets, etc., all of which prove so fatal to their health. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, our "young ladies" are sorry specimens of feminality; and palpitators, cosmetics and all the modern paraphernalia are required to make them appear fresh and blooming. Man is equally at fault. A devotee to all the absurd devices of fas.h.i.+on, he practically a.s.serts that "dress makes the man." But physical deformities are of far less importance than moral imperfections.

2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL.--It is not possible for human beings to attain their full stature of humanity, except by loving long and perfectly.

Behold that venerable man! he is mature in judgment, perfect in every action and expression, and saintly in goodness. You almost wors.h.i.+p as you behold. What rendered him thus perfect? What {99} rounded off his natural asperities, and moulded up his virtues? Love, mainly. It permeated every pore, and seasoned every fibre of his being, as could nothing else. Mark that matronly woman. In the bosom of her family she is more than a queen and G.o.ddess combined. All her looks and actions express the outflowing of some or all of the human virtues. To know her is to love her. She became thus perfect, not in a day or year, but by a long series of appropriate means. Then by what? Chiefly in and by love, which is specially adapted thus to develop this maturity.

3. PHYSICAL STATURE.--Men and women generally increase in stature until the twenty-fifth year, and it is safe to a.s.sume, that perfection of function is not established until maturity of bodily development is completed. The physical contour of these representations plainly exhibits the difference in structure, and also implies difference of function. Solidity and strength are represented by the organization of the male, grace and beauty by that of the female. His broad shoulders represent physical power and the right of dominion, while her bosom is the symbol of love and nutrition.

HOW TO DETERMINE A PERFECT HUMAN FIGURE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lady's Dress in the days of Greece.]

The proportions of the perfect human figure are strictly mathematical. The whole figure is six times the length of the foot. Whether the form be slender or plump, this rule holds good. Any deviation from it is a departure from the highest beauty of proportion. The Greeks made all their statues according to this rule. The face, from the highest point of the forehead, where the hair begins, to the end of the chin, is one-tenth of the whole stature. The hand, from the wrist to the end of the middle finger, is the same. The chest is a fourth, and from the nipples to the top of the head is the same. From the top of the chest to the highest point of the forehead is a seventh. If the length of the face, from the roots of the hair to the chin, be divided into three equal parts, the first division determines the point where the eyebrows meet, and the second the place of the nostrils. The navel is the central point of the human body, and if a man should lie on his back with his arms and legs extended, the periphery of the circle which might be described around him, with the navel for its center, would touch the extremities of his hands and feet. The height from the feet to the top of the head is the same as the {100} distance from the extremity of one hand to the extremity of the other when the arms are extended.

The Venus de Medici is considered the most perfect model of the female forms, and has been the admiration of the world for ages. Alexander Walker, after minutely describing this celebrated statue, says: "All these admirable characteristics of the female form, the mere existence of which in woman must, one is temped to imagine, be, even to herself, a source of ineffable pleasure, these const.i.tute a being worthy, as the personification of beauty, of occupying the temples of Greece; present an object finer, alas, than Nature even seems capable of producing; and offer to all nations and ages a theme of admiration and delight." Well might Thomson say:

So stands the statue that enchants the world, So, bending, tries to vail the matchless boast-- The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.

We beg our readers to observe the form of the waist (evidently innocent of corsets and tight dresses) of this model woman, and also that of the Greek Slave in the accompanying outlines. These forms are such as unperverted nature and the highest art alike require. To compress the waist, and thereby change its form, pus.h.i.+ng the ribs inward, displacing the vital organs, and preventing the due expansion of the lungs, is as destructive to beauty as it is to health. {101}

THE HISTORY, MYSTERY, BENEFITS AND INJURIES OF THE CORSET.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Corset in the 18th Century.]

1. The origin of the corset is lost in remote antiquity. The figures of the early Egyptian women show clearly an artificial shape of the waist produced by some style of corset. A similar style of dress must also have prevailed among the ancient Jewish maidens; for Isaiah, in calling upon the women to put away their personal adornments, says: "Instead of a girdle there shall be a rent, and instead of a stomacher (corset) a girdle of sackcloth."

2. Homer also tells us of the cestus or girdle of Venus, which was borrowed by the haughty Juno with a view to increasing her personal attractions, that Jupiter might be a more tractable and orderly husband.

3. Coming down to the later times, we find the corset was used in France and England as early as the 12th century.

4. The most extensive and extreme use of the corset occurred in the 16th century, during the reign of Catherine de Medici of France and Queen Elizabeth of England. With Catherine de Medici a thirteen-inch waist measurement was considered the standard of fas.h.i.+on, while a thick waist was an abomination. No lady could consider her figure of proper shape unless she could span her waist with her two hands. To produce this result a strong rigid corset was worn night and day until the waist was laced down to the required size. Then over this corset was placed the steel apparatus shown in the ill.u.s.tration on next page. This corset-cover reached from the hip to the throat, and {102} produced a rigid figure over which the dress would fit with perfect smoothness.

5. During the 18th century corsets were largely made from a species of leather known as "Bend," which was not unlike that used for shoe soles, and measured nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness. One of the most popular corsets of the time was the corset and stomacher shown in the accompanying ill.u.s.tration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Steel Corset worn in Catherine's time.]

6. About the time of the French Revolution a reaction set in against tight lacing, and for a time there was a return to the early cla.s.sical Greek costume. This style of dress prevailed, with various modifications, until about 1810, when corsets and tight lacing again returned with threefold fury. Buchan, a prominent writer of this period, says that it was by no means uncommon to see "a mother lay her daughter down upon the carpet, and, placing her foot upon her back, break half a dozen laces in tightening her stays."

7. It is reserved to our own time to demonstrate that corsets and tight lacing do not necessarily go hand in hand. Distortion and feebleness are not beauty. A proper proportion should exist between the size of the waist and the breadth of the shoulders and hips, and if the waist is diminished below this proportion, it suggests disproportion and invalidism rather than grace and beauty.

8. The perfect corset is one which possesses just that degree of rigidity which will prevent it from wrinkling, but will at the same time allow freedom in the bending and twisting of the body. Corsets boned with whalebone, horn or steel are necessarily stiff, rigid and uncomfortable.

After a few days' wear the bones or steels become bent and set in position, or, as more frequently happens, they break and cause injury or discomfort to the wearer.

9. About seven years ago an article was discovered for the stiffening of corsets, which has revolutionized the corset industry of the world. This article is manufactured from {103} the natural fibers of the Mexican Ixtle plant, and is known as Coraline. It consists of straight, stiff fibers like bristles bound together into a cord by being wound with two strands of thread pa.s.sing in opposite directions. This produces an elastic fiber intermediate in stiffness between twine and whalebone. It cannot break, but it possesses all the stiffness and flexibility necessary to hold the corset in shape and prevent its wrinkling.

We congratulate the ladies of to-day upon the advantages they enjoy over their sisters of two centuries ago, in the forms and the graceful and easy curves of the corsets now made as compared with those of former times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Forms of Corsets in the time of Elizabeth of England.]

{104}

TIGHT-LACING.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EGYPTIAN CORSET.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NATURAL WAIST.

THE EFFECTS OF LACING.]

It destroys natural beauty and creates an unpleasant and irritable temper.

A tight-laced chest and a good disposition cannot go together. The human form has been molded by nature, the best shape is undoubtedly that which she has given it. To endeavor to render it more elegant by artificial means is to change it; to make it much smaller below and much larger above is to destroy its beauty; to keep it cased up in a kind of domestic cuira.s.s is not only to deform it, but to expose the internal parts to serious injury.

Under such compression as is commonly practiced by ladies, the {105} development of the bones, which are still tender, does not take place conformably to the intention of nature, because nutrition is necessarily stopped, and they consequently become twisted and deformed.

Those who wear these appliances of tight-lacing often complain that they cannot sit upright without them--are sometimes, indeed, compelled to wear them during all the twenty-four hours; a fact which proves to what extent such articles weaken the muscles of the trunk. The injury does not fall merely on the internal structure of the body, but also on its beauty, and on the temper and feelings with which that beauty is a.s.sociated. Beauty is in reality but another name for expression of countenance, which is the index of sound health, intelligence, good feelings and peace of mind. All are aware that uneasy feelings, existing habitually in the breast speedily exhibit their signature on the countenance, and that bitter thoughts or a bad temper spoil the human expression of its comeliness and grace.

{107}

The Care of the Hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATURAL HAIR.]