Corsets and Health

The unpopular truth about corsets and health

The greatest risk to gaining objective knowledge of this subject is to read the misinterpretations, or opinions of people who profit from the corset industries. They will dismiss or attempt to discredit the obvious harm to health, which includes their attempt to misrepresent the facts of history.

As was said and clearly understood in the nineteenth century, corsets made women look attractive and feel good about themselves, so they wanted to believe that they were harmless to health.

The corset industry exploited that by telling them that they were harmless.

It is similar to the tactics used by the tobacco industry. They know that people who smoke may feel good about it, or even enjoy it, so they don’t want to believe that it will cause them great harm later in life. The tobacco industry tells them that it won’t, and naturally, that is what smokers want to believe, so they do. When they reach the age of forty, unfortunately some of them will say, with a raspy throat damaged voice . . . “‘cough’, and I defend, cough, cough, my right to cough, smoke, cough, cough.”

Somebody who tells people that corsets or smoking will cause them harm is going to be unpopular to those industries and their customers.

Furthermore, my statement of the facts from the nineteenth century are not going to make me popular with people who have other views, or who want the public to believe their ‘opinions’ about the past.

I don’t wish to offend anyone, and am not expecting to win any popularity contests, but I do know the facts, and I can only recommend that people read the real history documents and judge for themselves.

I can’t force people to do anything, but I can describe the situation.

I could say, with constructive optimism – Use your eyes, and your brains, try to be as objective as possible, check the facts, and think and decide for yourself.

A brief history of Corsets and health

The first effective sewing machine available for general use was patented by Elias Howe in the U.S.A. in 1846. It enabled the development of a cottage industry to produce corsets for ordinary women which were previously only affordable to wealthy families and royalty, and had hence represented “status”.

By the late 19th century extreme corsetry was very common, as evident from more than 20 retail shops in London where 14″ corsets were available off the rack as a standard mass produced size. In the twentieth century The Guinness Book of Records published that as the world record, presumably thinking it was a one off rarity.

Like most things in life, when something is possible, people will go to extremes and hence there were women who would see it as a status symbol to have the tightest corset, and the narrowest waist, and hence health problems, caused by the compression of the chest and abdomen, such as breathlessness, faintness, indigestion and fatigue, became so common as to be regarded as a ‘normal’ feature of ‘femininity’ or a normal trait of women. However, it was also known that the loosely clad country girls were sturdy, energetic, and stong, compared to the frail, easily exhausted city damsels. Similarly such symptoms were never seen in primitive, loosely clad tribal women of such places as Africa.

In fact the city women suffered from a multitude of health problems highlighted by the tendency to faint with heat, exertion, or emotion, where fainting rooms were established in public venues, with chaise lounges that they could lay on to rest and recover after unlacing their constricting garments.

However, many of them refused to believe that corsets were harmful to their health, largely because they could see their outward ‘attractive, and ‘healthy’ narrow waisted ‘appearance’, but could not see the crushing affect on their internal organs because they were covered by layers of skin and muscle. As stated, they simply thought that breathlessness and fatigue was ‘normal’ for ‘all ‘ women.

Corset debates about health surfaced occasionally, especially between doctors and the corset industry, and peaked at the turn of the century, when the critics of corset usage won, and corset wearing took a steep decline.

When world war 1 started men went off to fight, and women were required to do heavy manual work in munitions factories. The corsets impaired their breathing and made it difficult or impossible to perform the heavy work so they discarded them in favor of loose clothing. After the war the loose garments of the Charleston era became fashionable and corsets have not since retuned to popularity, probably because health authorities would soon stop it.

Hence the period of mass produced corsetry which spread throughout the Western world, the U.S.A., the U.K. and Europe lasted between the 1850’s through to 1914.

Corsets, posture, and blood pressure

The cause of low and high blood pressure is generally regarded as a mystery, and hence the most common form of high blood pressure has been called “essential hypertension”

However, according to the posture theory which was first published in 1980, I suggested that poor posture, and leaning forward compresses the air in the chest to cause weaknesses in the blood vessels below the waist, and affect blood flow, and blood pressure, and disposes to chronic faintness and fatigue.

The following two items of interest from 1887 and 2010, present an interesting study and report regarding those ideas.

In 1887 Robert L. Dickinson scientifically measured the amount of pressure exerted by tight corsets on the internal cavities of the chest and abdomen, with comments on the adverse effects which such pressure would obviously have on health. He also commented on similar increases in pressure occurring in individuals who worked in occupations which required leaning toward such things as sewing machines etc. His study was published in the New York Medical Journal on November 5, 1887.See here

More recently and 18 year old woman has produced a YouTube video in which she measured her blood pressure before and after wearing a corset, and noted that it was significantly higher when wearing the corset.
She then explained that she was prompted to make the measurements after noticing that when she was wearing a corset her heart pumped harder.
She goes on the explain that when the corset is worn about the waist it impairs the blood flow from the heart to the legs, so the heart has to pump harder to overcome the pressure.
However, she adds that the flow of blood after the corset produces a weaker flow of blood to the legs, and hence a weaker flow of blood returning to the brain which results in faintness.
If the woman actually faints, she falls to the floor, and then the flow of blood is no longer affected by gravity, so it reaches the brain more easily, and the woman regains consciousness.
She also commented on the general belief that corseted women felt faint because the corset affected breathing and the intake of oxygen, but the real cause is the impairment to blood flow.
She also notes that the veins of the legs have one way valves, so any resistance to the upward flow of blood which is also caused by the corset, is likely to damage them and cause varicose veins. The video posted on 23-12 2010 can be seen here

See my explanation and theory about the effect of poor posture and corsets on blood flow and blood pressure, in relation to Valsalva’s maneuver, orthostatic intolerance, faintness, and chronic fatigue here

While I was reading about nineteenth century corsets I found that the compression of the womens chests caused a tendency to breathlessness and palpitations, and faintness etc, but those symptoms were also being interpreted as a response to psychological problems, such as bad news. The modern psychological theories have evolved from that mistaken interpretation of cause.

I also noticed that when corsets went out of fashion at the start of the twentieth century the women stopped fainting regularly, but, at the same time some psychiatrists were arguing that the incidence of such symptoms that were typical of the Victorian women of the nineteenth century declined because of advances in psychotherapy.

The corsets caused health problems by compressing the waist on the outside, but pushing the stomach etc, up into the chest and crushing the heart and lungs, or downward compressing the kidneys and bowels etc, and the change in the position of the stomach etc was called gastroptosis, or, when multiple organs were displaced the condition was more generally called visceroptosis.

At the start of the twentieth century there were hundreds of articles about visceroptosis in research journals, but as corsets went out of fashion the severity and of symptoms, and the frequency of them being seen by doctors declined. There were virtually no articles in research journals by the 1980’s, and the word visceroptosis disappeared from many medical dictionaries, and tended to be referred to as an obsolete and irrelevant label.

However, nowadays many men wear tight belts, and many women wear tight girdles etc, and the diseases are still common, but milder and the cause is undoubtedly the same, but patients are rarely told, even though x-ray evidence often shows severe displacement of the stomach etc, in which case they are often told that there is no evidence of physical cause ant that the symptoms are caused by emotional or psychological problems or stress, etc.

There is also the general attitude that the cause can never be confirmed but that is false.

It would be very easy to get 300 dogs, rats, or monkeys, and put 200 of them in corsets shortly after birth, and remove the corsets from 100 when they reached adulthood.

The obvious outcome would be that the animals that did not wear corsets would be the healthiest and live the longest. Those that wore corsets until adulthood would be permanently deformed internally and would have many obscure and obvious health problems and die young. Those who had the corsets left on them permanently would be the sickest, and have the most obvious and severest symptoms and die the youngest.

Presumably every sensible person would know that for certain, so the experiment isn’t necessary, but it would probably be blocked on the grounds of cruelty to dumb animals.

Unfortunately, if that experiment is not done, some doctors will continue to argue that the health problems are psychological, and that would be a much a much greater crime against humanity.

For more information on visceroptosis see here

Posture produces similar anatomical pressure to corsets which produces the symptoms of hypochondria and hysteria

While I was in the process of developing “The Posture Theory” between 1975 and 1980 I became aware that the symptoms involved were also generally regarded as the features of hypochondria and attributed to psychological factors.

Many years later I found evidence that women of the nineteenth century suffered from a similar set of symptoms, where the symptoms were not the result of compressing the chest and abdomen because of poor posture, but because of the compressing effects of tight waisted corsets. These corsets had a more severe effect than poor posture, and produced a very significant effect on blood flow which produced a tendency to faint. The combination of symptoms were generally regarded as the features of hysteria and were also attributed to psychological factors.

I therefore became interested in that subject and some of my findings which are extracted from “The Posture Theory” are presented on this webpage.

The Posture Theory And Corsets

About fourteen years after writing the original Posture Theory I went into an antique shop and noticed a book on a desk opened to a page which contained an illustration of the internal anatomy of a woman who had worn corsets.
The internal organs were all compressed into a smaller space, therefore I immediately assumed that women who wore corsets would have suffered from similar health problems to those which I had attributed to poor posture, so I decided to investigate the literature on that subject to confirm my conclusion, and also to find any other ideas about the mechanisms which caused the symptoms.
A month later I went to the State Library Of South Australia and obtained two books. One was the same as the book in the antique shop, but had a different publication date, and was called “Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease” which was published in England in 1895, and reprinted in Australia in 1904. The other one was called “Madre Natura Versus The Moloch Of Fashion”, and it contained a four page list of health problems which eminent medical men of the nineteenth century attributed to corsets, so I had confirmed my assumption.
I also found that many of those medical authorities had attributed the health problems to the fact that the corsets compressed and displaced internal organs. The displacement of internal organs and the associated health problems were called visceroptosis.
I later found evidence that the shape of the corset could influence the shape of the spine, and that the high waisted corsets compressed the lungs to cause respiratory diseases, and that low waisted corsets compressed the womb to cause problems with menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth, and that corsets generally caused problems for most of the women who wore them, to such an extent that they gave women the reputation for being the weaker sex. This was despite the fact that some men wore corsets and were also sickly, and that some country girls continued to wear loose garments and remained healthy and robust.
Corsets also trapped blood below the waist and reduced blood flow to the brain, so virtually all women who wore them tended to faint, and many of women had severe fainting fits which were generally referred to as hysterical fits because of the popular belief that they were caused by psychological factors.
Public debates about the health affects finally convinced women to start discarding their corsets in 1900, and by 1914 the corset era was virtually over and the classical hysterical fainting fits which had been very common in the nineteenth century became extremely rare. Although the other ailments which were caused by tight waisted garments still occurred because of the fashion for tight belts and girdles, they were only experienced in their milder form, so medical research into this link began to decline until it virtually ceased.
Therefore, in order to investigate the subject and find the clues that I needed to strengthen The Posture Theory, I had to use evidence from nineteenth and early twentieth century literature.
Reference: The Posture Theory 11th edition (October 2000) p.172.

See a website about postural cause and treatment of prolapse of the womb (uterine prolapse), cystocele, and rectocele here.

Corsets And Compression Of The Waist

Nineteenth century women wore corsets to create an hour glass figure which was designed to improve her attractiveness but the chest, rib cage, and abdomen, were permanently deformed.The normal broad and open base of the rib cage allows for free and deep breathing, but the V-shaped deformity caused by corsets interfered with the full movement of the respiratory muscles which was compensated for by a shallower and more rapid breathing. The normal flexible rib cartilages consequentially became rigid from lack of use and that added to the problem. Pressure in the chest interfered with the flow of blood from the heart to the lungs. The heart was affected causing hurried circulation with a net result of imperfectly aerated blood chemistry that led to other obscure ailments. The heart was prone to flutterings and palpitations which probably occurred with or without heart disease, and resulted in panicky apprehensions about the prospect of collapse or death.The liver was greatly mis-shaped and displaced downwards and indented by the ribs. The diaphragm and all the abdominal organs were mis-shaped, displaced and disturbed in their function. The ligaments which held the abdominal organs in place were stretched, or weakened or gave way. Constipation was common because of the affect on the bowel, where intestines were dropped, folded upon themselves, kinked and dilated and had impaired circulation and poor tone. The nervous system was affected so the women suffered from”nerves” and sleeplessness. In novels written at the time, women were portrayed as fainting if they were approached by a bandit, or if their house caught fire, or if they merely received bad news from abroad, or if the weather was to hot, or if they slightly exerted themselves. Some women were derogatorily described as being able to faint at will. The faint was relieved by unlacing the corset (which improved breathing and circulation). Obviously a woman who was not wearing a corset could experience the same degree of trauma, emotion, heat or exertion without fainting. Reference: The Posture Theory 11th edition (October 2000) p.173. Click here to see a further article on breathing disorders in hypochondria for comparison here.

The word hysteria comes from the ancient Greek language where . . .

“hystera” meant the “uterus” or “womb“, and

“ia” means the “state” or “condition” of something.

Hence the word hysteria referred to any set of symptoms which were thought to be caused by the condition or disease of the womb.

Of course, nobody knew the actual cause so it was just a theory.

One of the theories from earlier centuries was that the womb was like a small rabbit which lived in the pelvic region inside the woman’s abdomen. Sometimes it broke free and wandered up to have a nibble on the stomach where it caused bellyache, and then moved upwards to nibble on the lungs where it caused chest pains, and then up to the throat to cause sore throat, and then up to the brain to cause headaches, or delirium, or insanity.

In order to treat the ailment the earlier doctors mixed a potion of foul smelling ingredients and placed them under the woman’s nose to drive the “womb” back to it’s normal place in the pelvis.

Nowadays doctors still don’t know the real cause of those multiple symptoms occurring in the same person so the say that they are caused by the strange and mysterious activities of the ‘sub-conscious’ mind.

Such modern ideas do not have any scientific proof to support them and are no more reliable than the earlier ones, but until the real cause is found people will be inclined to believe them.

The Posture Theory is a much more logical and reliable explanation for many of those symptoms. See here.

One of the lessons from history is that intelligent and highly educated people of the past have developed many strange, but plausible ideas, and have managed to convince the public that they actually knew what they were talking about when, in fact, they didn’t. Each time they call those ideas “official”, “modern”, “mainstream”, “widely accepted”,”opinion”.

Anyone who questioned the merit of those ideas in “Ye Olde Fangled Wikipedia” would have been banned for “Disruptive Editing” (WP:DE), and the better ideas would have been removed.

The theory that the symptoms were caused by a small, rabbit like animal, would still be “dominating” the public mind in the 21st century.

Opinions about the cause of hysteria in the 20th century

Hysteria “involves a list of symptoms of all known diseases . . . It occurs most frequently among ladies who have been reared in luxury . . . It is a notable fact that hysteria rarely or never occurs among the women of uncivilised nations.” Ladies Guide in Health and Disease, 1904

(My comment. The main reason that the massive number of symptoms occurred in civilised women of 1904 was because most of them wore tight waist compressing corsets. The reason they “never” occurred among “uncivilised” tribes people, in such countries as Africa, was because they wore loose clothing, or no clothing, so they did not have anything compressing their chests or abdomens).

Hysteria is “the conversion neurosis in which a psychological conflict is converted into a physical disturbance.” Reference: The Colombia Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition, 1960

“There was a time when high-born ladies acquired the habit of fainting at will. It was probably a form of hysteria. Modern girls are too sensible for this.” From: Modern Ways to Health (1966) Vol.2 p.680

“It has been said that hysteria can imitate practically all the diseases to which mankind is subject”
Reference: Encyclopedia Americana (1968) Vol. 14 p. 611

“HYSTERIA – [fr. Gk hysterikos, fr. hystera womb; fr. the former notion that hysteric women were suffering from disturbances of the womb] . . . a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions.” Reference: Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1972)

HYSTERIA – A condition which was most common and most severe in the nineteenth century amongst women who wore whalebone corsets in combination with bustles and heavy frocking suspended by strapping from the shoulders, waist and hips. The tight waisted corsets compressed the heart and lungs and displaced internal organs, including the womb and ovaries and the kidneys and adrenals, and altered the pattern of blood flow throughout the whole body, and affected the nervous system resulting in over-reactions to all types of stimuli and a tendency to fainting and convulsions. The heavy frocking and straps disposed to varieties of spasm and paralysis. The combined effect produced the numerous aches and pains, symptoms, functional disorders and sensory disturbances which are the features of hysteria, and which may occur to some degree, as a result of any factor which compresses or displaces internal anatomy.The Posture Theory 5th edition (1996) p.6. See also here.

How to treat faintness © Max Banfield 19-5-11
Based on methods I have been developing for the past thirty years.
This description dispenses with all of the ‘mystique’ and ‘jargon’ of science and medicine, and provides the information in plain English, with practical suggestions for real life situations.
If you write about any of these details please recognise my copyright and acknowledge the source . . .

In order to treat the symptom of faintness effectively I had to read a lot of information from all sources so it is relevant to start on this webpage which involves studies from the ninteteenth century and earlier.

First of all the problem can be understood by comparing the blood and brain with a wine bottle. If you lay the bottle on it’s side the wine will flow toward the cork, and if you stand it up the wine will move downwards and leave a gap of about 1cm. In other words the wine is no longer reaching the cork. Similarly the blood of the human body flows toward the brain if they are laying down, but when the person stands up the blood rushes to the feet. The blood would drain away from the brain if it was not for the fact that there are reflexes which keep the blood flowing normally regardless of the effects of gravity. However, in some people with weak circulation the sudden movement from laying to standing can reduce the flow of blood to the brain sufficiently to cause faintness.

Now for some more relevant facts. There are other things that can interfere with the natural and effortless flow of blood to the brain. For example a tight collar can reduce the flow of blood from the chest to the brain. Also in the nineteenth century it was well known that a tight waisted corset could slow the flow of blood from the feet to the brain. Another factor is large varicose veins in the legs which can hold more blood than normal narrow veins, and hence reduce the volume available to circulation, and they can produce a minor tendency to faintness.

The blood contains oxygen which the brain needs so there are other factors which influence faintness, such as the amount of oxygen getting into the blood. Hence any factor which compresses the lungs, or reduces the expansion of the lungs, can cause such problems, and include tight chest straps, corsets which are tightly strapped around the chest, or corsets which are tight around the waist which resrict the downward expansion of the lungs, and poor posture.

Many factors can induce a faint but I am now able to discuss how to control the most common experience which occurs when a person wakes up in the morning and stands up to get out of bed. In a healthy person with normal circulation that happens without any problems at all. However, in some types of chronic fatigue syndrome, which involves a weakness in circulation, there is a tendency to feel faint when moving from the laying to the standing position. The reason is comparable to the way wine flows when the bottle is moved from the laying to the standing position. The wine doesn’t reach the cork, and in humans the flow of blood to the brain is weaker than it should be, so less blood reaches the brain.

Consequently, on those days when the person gets out of bed, and suddenly feels faint the sensation may be mysterious or distressing, and they may feel as if they are going to collapse or die, but there is a logical explanation for it, and they need to have a way of stopping the faint or they may injure themselves if they fall against furniture etc.

If they fall flat on the floor, the effect of gravity is gone and the blood flows immediately to the brain, and they soon regain consciousness. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of cases fainting never occurs so I can give some information on how to understand and prevent that process.

The idea is to get blood to your brain, so if you get out of bed and feel faint . . .

1. Simply place your hand on the wall to support your body and prevent yourself from falling.
2. If you still feel faint or slightly dizzy, bend at the hips to lower your upper body, and support your weight by placing your hands on your knees.
3. If you still feel faint. bend at the neck so that your head is parallel to the ground, or slightly inclined downwards.
4. If you are still feeling faint, then shake your head, but not too roughly.
In most cases you will find that one or more of those methods will enable you to feel less faint and then proceed to the next step . . .
5. Slowly raise your head, and then slowly straighten your body, and then slowly walk forward until you are confident that your are not faint any more and can go about your daily tasks without any further problems.

On rarer occasions you may get out of bed and feel so faint that you are going to fall, so simply move back and sit on the side of your bed with your hands placed on your knees for support, and if necessary lower your head for a few moments. When you feel that the faintness has gone then slowly raise your head, and stand up slowly, and walk away slowly, until the sensation of faintness has passed.

On even rarer occasions you may feel faint when you wake up and raise your head. In such situations, the fact that you are awake will get your circulation going, so you may need to wait a few moments to get out of bed. You can also do so gradually by placing an extra pillow under your head for a few minutes, and then lifting your shoulders up to the pillow, and then moving from the laying to the sitting position, and then slowly from the sitting to the standing position, and walking away slowly etc.

Those methods can be applied routinely with practice if and when they become necessary.

I will provide methods for treating other symtpoms if their is sufficient response to this information.

For example
How to treat faintness when it occurs at other times
How to manage the problem of breathlessness
How to manage the problem of fatigue – tiredness
How to manage the problem of a different type of fatigue – the abnormal response to exertion
How to exercise without problems
How to manage other symptoms

For my YouTube video on the cause and treatment of faintness see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs770_nwq6I

Poor posture, tight waisted clothing and Da Costa’s syndrome

In 1975 started reading medical literature to determine the cause of my own symptoms because my own doctor, and specialists didn’t know.

I soon found that the condition I had as called Da Costa’s syndrome which was the only ailment which included my combination of symptoms which were left-sided chest pains, palpitations, breathlessness, faintness and fatigue

Within five years of detailed observations of my own symtoms I was able to determine that poor posture was the cause, and another ten years went by when I saw a book in an antique shop with a page opened to an illustration of the internal organs of 19th century women who wore tight waisted corsets, and assumed that they would have the same problems with their health, When I read that book I found it to be true.

Another fifteen years went by when I joined Wikipedia and added that information but two editors continued to argue about it and deleted all of my suggestions and all links to the evidence which included a nineteenth century research study which measured the pressure on the internal cavities of the chest and abdomen caused by corsets.They argued that all of my ideas were nonsense.

However, more recently I found a reference which described a prize that was offered by the Alexander Memorial Fund to the person who produced the best essay on the cause and prevention of heart related ailments amongst soldiers as compared to civilians. The prize was won by Assistant-Surgeon Arthur Myers who criticised commanding officers who made their soldiers look smart at the expense of their health and recommended that they should be allowed to open their jackets.

Other authorities of that time had suggested that carrying 60lb knapsacks on their backs with straps tightly compressing their chest was the cause of a variety of chest and heart related problems which included palpitations, and recommended that all impediments to the full expansion to the chest should be avoided. They all made the similar suggestion that the cause was mechanical obstruction to the hearts blood flow, with the only question being whether it was due to the tight uniforms, or compression of the chest by drills or by altered work habits, in particular in the way they stood.

Reference: Howell, Joel (1985). “”Soldier’s heart”: the redefinition of heart disease and speciality formation in early twentieth-century Great Britain.”. Medical History: Supplement No. 5:34-52.

Consequently, regardless of whether or not other people have since disputed those ideas, the fact is that the conclusions that I drew about my own health, based on my own observations of my own symptoms was not nonsense, and my two critics are just defamatory fools.

Note also that I came to many similar conclusions but in particular that the compression of the waist by poor posture or corsets impaired the blood flow between the feet and brain and weakened the blood vessels below the waist to produce a weaker than normal blood flow.