Diseases > Domestic medicine

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their winter garments, without considering that
our most penetrating colds generally happen in the
spring.
Clothes often become hurtful hy their being made
subsenflent to the purposes of pride or vanity. Man¬
kind in all ages seem to have considered clothes in
this view; accordingly their fashion and figure have
been continually varying, with very little regard
either to health, the climate, or conveniency: a far¬
thingale, for example, may be very necessary in hot
southern climates, but surely nothing can be more
ridiculous in the cold regions of the north.
Even the human shape is often attempted to be
mended by dress, and those who know no better
believe that mankind would be monsters without its
assistance. All attempts of this nature are highly
pernicious. The most destructive of them in this
country is that of squeezing the stomach and bowels
into as narrow a compass as possible, to procure,
what is falsely called, a fine shape. By this practice
the action of the stomach and bowels, the motion of
the heart and lungs, and almost all the vital functions,
are obstructed. Hence proceed indigestions, syncopes,
or fainting fits, coughs, consumptions of the lungs,
and other complaints so common among females.
The feet, likewise, often suffer by pressure. How
a small foot came to be reckoned genteel, I will not
pretend to say ; but certain it is, that this notion has
made many persons lame. Almost nine tenths of
mankind are troubled with corns: a disease that is
seldom or never occasioned but by strait shoes. Corns
are not only very troublesome, but by rendering people
unable to walk, they may likewise be considered as the
remote cause cf other diseases. Some persons are
rendered quite lame by the nails of their toes having
grown into the flesh, and we frequently hear of