The diaphragm acts like the piston of a great pump, rising and falling sixteen times a minute, and pumping the blood out of the abdominal and pelvic cavities. Where its stroke is only one-half or one-third the normal, the amount of blood raised must be correspondingly less. The investigations of Dr. Thos. J. Mays, of Philadelphia, and of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Mich., have shown that women ought to breathe precisely as men do. The thoracic type of respiration in women is entirely artificial, and is not, as physiologists have claimed, a wise provision of nature, having in view the restriction of the movements of the diaphragm during pregnancy. The second cause assigned for the ill-health of American women is lack of specific exercise. All exercise is not of equal value; exercise of the arms and legs, while of great value, is relatively far less important than exercise of the trunk muscles, for the reason that the circulation through the thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities is dependent upon exercise of the muscles surrounding these cavities. When the trunk muscles are not freely and systematically exercised, the circulation through the lungs and through the abdominal and pelvic organs becomes feeble, and the functions of these organs are imperfectly fulfilled. We have now arrived at the point where we can trace, step by step, the evolution of ill-health in the American woman. Her undeveloped body is encased in corsets when she is fifteen years old. At school she learns a great many things, but is not taught that in order to have good health she must exercise the muscles of her body, and especially those of the trunk, daily and systematically. After marriage she settles down to a life of physical inactivity; she takes hardly any exercise, and even this little is not taken systematically; she does not breathe with the diaphragm; her circulation becomes feeble, her hands and feet are always cold, the blood accumulates in her abdominal and pelvic cavities, the functions of the abdominal and pelvic viscera are imperfectly carried on; she becomes dyspeptic; her stomach is distended with gas; her liver and intestines are torpid; the waste products of the system are not carried off, but accumulate in the blood. The opinion is constantly gaining ground that most of the functional nervous disturbances in women are due to auto-intoxication.