Now we may discuss the apparatus which has been degraded into carrying out the painful duty of producing an attenuated figure. The name stays indicates exactly the original intention of the clothing to which it is applied; but unfortunately something more than mere support has been sought after at various times since the classic period to which the beginnings of stays may be traced. The pair of stays which together form the modern corset--sometimes ignorantly and by false analogy supplied with an extra "s"--is what is now used for purposes of compression. Proximately the idea is that of improving the figure, as it is called, and ensuring that it can be covered with garments of a fashionable shape. The ultimate results are about as bad as they can be, and it is not a question of opinion in this case, for the evil effects can be easily demonstrated. Sir William Flower[54] refers to the practice as being "one of the most remarkable of all the artificial deformities produced by adherents to a conventional standard, in defiance of the dictates of Nature and of reason." He points out that in the process of deforming the skull, to which we shall allude later, the latter being a solid case with tolerably uniform walls, its capacity remains the same whatever alterations may be made in the shape, but in the case of the body it is quite another matter. It can, in fact, be well likened to a cylinder of fixed length which is closed above and below by a framework of bone, and circular compression must actually diminish the area which has to be occupied by some of the most vital organs. He goes on to say that the framework of the chest is a most admirable and complex arrangement of numerous pieces of solid bone and elastic cartilage joined together in such a manner as to allow of expansion and contraction for the purposes of respiration--expansion and contraction which, if a function so essential to the preservation of life and health is to be performed in an efficient manner, should be perfectly free and capable of variation under different circumstances. So, indeed, it has been allowed to be in all parts of the world and in all ages with one exception. It was reserved for mediæval civilized Europe to have invented the system of squeezing together, rendering immobile, and actually deforming the most important part of the human frame; and the custom has been handed down to, and flourishes in, our day, notwithstanding all our professed admiration for the models of classical antiquity, and our awakened attention to the laws of health.