In the fourteenth century an edict was issued by the Emperor Joseph of Austria, forbidding the use of corsets in all nunneries and places where girls were educated, and calling upon the Church to aid him, threatening excommunication to those evil-disposed damsels who should persist in operating upon their waists. The College of Physicians of that day took up the subject with activity and zeal, and dissertations upon the evils of tight lacing were scattered broadcast. Professor Virchow, that eminent pathologist, wrote, “What is the use of introducing the principles and appliances of hygiene into the huts of the poor and ignorant, when the scions of wealth and pretended intelligence, especially of the gentler sex, show their contempt of hygiene by their dress and general wearing apparel. In days gone by I have battled against that diabolical invention called the corset, but this crusade has been given up by me as absolutely futile.” The modern hygienist has taken the stand that, since the corset cannot be suppressed, it _must_ be reformed. About 1880, for the first time, some attention began to be given to the hygienic consideration of the style of the corset. =The Influence of the Corset on the Female Body.=—As a result of the four hundred years in which the corset has molded the plastic form of woman, she has become physically so degenerated that it is necessary to have recourse to the artifices of the modiste in order to have even the appearance of a good figure, and the support afforded by the corset to maintain the erect position. [Illustration: Fig. 13.—Normal chest.] [Illustration: Fig. 14.—Effects of tight lacing on bony thorax.] The modern corsets, made of one piece, can be classified in three categories, according to the region of the body on which they exert the greatest pressure. First, the “curved front” corset, enveloping the thorax and abdomen, but making the strongest compression at the base of the thorax; second, the “straight front” corset, enveloping the thorax and abdomen, but making the strongest pressure upon the abdomen; and third, the “abdominal corset,” only embracing the abdomen, and supporting neither the breasts nor the base of the thorax. In studying the effects of the corset on the body they will be considered in this order. _The Curved Front Corset._—The corset is applied to the trunk of the body, consisting of the thoracic cavity, a distensible cage containing and filled by the heart and lungs; second, the abdominal cavity, whose walls are almost wholly composed of muscles, and containing the liver and the entire digestive apparatus; and third, the pelvic cavity, whose walls are partly bony and partly muscular.