The dorsal and abdominal muscles also undergo partial atrophy in consequence of the habitual wearing of the corset, because this garment to some extent relieves these muscles of their natural function. Anæmia, gastric and hepatic disorders, and intercostal neuralgia are also dependent upon this “most disastrous error of woman’s dress,” as von Krafft-Ebing calls the corset. Menge has very thoroughly studied the hurtful influence of the corset on the feminine reproductive organs. He enumerates, as a result of wearing it, among many evil results, inflammatory states and enlargement of the ovaries, relaxation of the uterine muscles, atrophy and excessive proliferation of the uterine mucous membrane, the onset of the extremely disagreeable _fluor albus_, premature termination of pregnancy, displacements of the uterus (retroflexion, anteversion, prolapse), abnormal stretching of the entire pelvic floor, retention of urine, constipation, and nervous troubles of the most varied character. Very often, also, sterility in woman is causally dependent upon the constriction and pressure exercised by the corset. Rightly, therefore, the abandonment of the corset plays a principal part in the “reformed dress” of woman--a subject to which we shall later return. In addition to the accentuation of the breast by the corset and by other apparatus,[116] another aim of feminine fashion has been most persistent in very various forms, namely, the exaggeration of =the hips, or the buttocks, or both=--in fact, of all the visible parts of the clothed body which are directly related to the sexual functions of woman; that is to say, there has been a persistent endeavour to indicate in the most prominent manner, in a way to stimulate the male, the secondary sexual characters of the female in this region of the body. “The thoroughly modern women,” says Heinrich Pudor, “coquet at the present day less with their breasts than with their hind-quarters--for this reason, because for the most part they have a masculine type (?). It began with the _cul de Paris_. Nowadays, clothes are cut in such a way that in the view from the back the gluteal region is especially prominent. This is how the fashionable wife of a German officer strikes us at present.