The Iowa plain dealer. [volume] (New Oregon, Howard County, Iowa) 1867-1895, 1891-04-02
NATURAL BREATHING. !
From q Lecture by j. n. Kellogg, NJ. d., of
Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Battle Creek Santtarium.
Natural breathing seems to have be-
come lost art among women. and sad
loss it is. In addressing an audience of
several hundred ladies recently asked
them all to take deep breath. and
was very funny to see whole audience
OF shoulders come up. Some OF these
young ladies were being trained in
vocal music, and the professor was
teaching them to breathe abdominally,
that is, they represssd the shoulder mo-
ton and the movement Of the upper
chest. bnt the handles of the bellows
were SO tied down that the only way TO
get more air into the lungs under these
conditions was for the diaphragm to
crowd the contents of the abdominal
yiscera downward and this is very
harmful. Abdominal breathing with
out abundance of room is a great DAM
age instead of advantage. The young
women who are trying to make their
waists like the fashion plates, do it at
the expense of health. The stomach,
liver and kidneys are directly under tho
point where the heaviest pressure
comes, and if the waist is made smaller
it must be by crowding these organs
down, and as the cavity is packed full
by nature, other organs are displaced in
the crowding process.
called little girl eleven years old
upon the platform and fofnd that her
waist measured twenty-six inches and
she could expand three and half
inches-no movement of the shoulders,
her ribs swelling out just like those of
a boy or man. Some of the members
of the vocal class came up for measure
ment. One young lady measured
twenty-five inches around the waist
and she could expand only half an inch.
have observed that young ladies grow
smaller around the waist as they grow
older although the rest of the body may
be growing. She was just twice rs old
as the tile girl, and yet four inches
smaller. Another could expand only
three-eighths of an inch while third
was actually half an inch smaller when
she took a deep breath.
The point where the greatest pressure
usually comes in making up the fash
ionable dress is the most important
point in the whole body except the lit
line covers the abdominal brain, the
solar plexus, which regulates the di-
gestive system. 1t is the headquarters
of the nerves of animal life. These
nerves of vegetative life have charge of
the blood-making and all the nutritiye
functions of growth and repairs. What
right has woman to modify her form
in this senseless way? 1t Is SO we'll
understood that woman is all the time
half choked for breath that when she
faints away in crowded audience room,
the first thing is to unfasten her stays
and give her lungs a chance to get more
air. Did you ever hear Of anybody
loosening the vest of a man who hid
tainted away? The ladies of this coun-
try, almost without exception, young
or old, do not breathe enough. They
enfeeble their constitutions in this way,
| and 1T is what think is the matter
| of the race and why we are falling into
decay. The young men and women of
| the present are the victims, not only OF
their own follies, but are suffering be-
, cause of an invalid race of mothers
Reported by Helen l.. Manning.
| Woman. Lovely Woman.
Woman is guilty of many awkward.
nesses in public. She causes delays by
her chronic inability to find her ticket
or her fare, but this is because she has
, but one chaotic pocket in which to keep
F., all the things which men have dozen
places for. She will never believe that
information on a time table is as accur-
/ ate as that furnished by u preoccupied
/ official, but that is because she is used
to assimilating such facts only after
they have filtered through the masculine
intellect. She wears u disasreeable and
forbidding expression, but it is from
motives of rigid propriety, not from bad
temper. All these 81 S are hers, but, in
he matter of deliberate carelessness of
he rights of the unknown mnltitude
bout her, she is by no means the chief
uf siaosrs. kat, Fields Washington.