Page:Caplin - Health and Beauty1864 - 063.png

purpose of multiplying the air-cells, of which there are about six hundred millions, and their office is to take the oxygen from the atmosphere, vitalize the blood, and send it back to the heart, and from thence to every part of the body. Now, when the lungs are contracted by a compressed chest, two evils naturally result: in the first place, there is a low and feeble circulation, which is sure to induce weakness, languor, or idleness, for the brain and other organs, are unable to fulfil their functions for the want of that stimulus which is essential to bodily and mental activity; but there is a second and more dangerous evil than this. The compression of the chest brings the thin membrane of the lungs into contact, and upon the slightest inflammation suppuration naturally takes place, and hence pul­monary consumption is established. Writers upon phthisis are at present speculating upon the cause of the frequency of this malady, and some of them find it in the moist condition of our atmosphere, others in the supposed hereditary scrofulous state of the blood; but if those gentlemen will only look at the common practice of diminishing the width of the chest by stooping, or the shortening of the spine, consequent, perhaps, upon ill-adapted clothing, they will find in this a much more frequent cause of