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Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene
should be suspended from the shoulders. The dress should fit easily,
obstructing neither the circulation of the blood, nor a free, full, natural
respiration. The feet should be suitably protected from cold and damp.
Clad in this way, we can take exercise in the open air, even in the dew
of morning or evening, or after a fall of snow or rain, without fear of
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taking cold. Exercise in the invigorating air of heaven is necessary to a
healthy circulation of the blood. It is the best safeguard against colds,
coughs, and the internal congestions which lay the foundation of so
many diseases. True dress reform regulates every article of clothing.
If those ladies who are failing in health would lay off their fashionable
robes, clothe themselves suitably for out-door enjoyment, and exercise
in the open air, carefully at first, increasing the amount as they can
endure it, many of them might recover health, and live to bless the
world with their example and the work of their hands.
It is not the will of God that men and women should die prema-
turely, leaving their work unfinished. He would have us live out the
full measure of our days, with every organ free to do its allotted work.
Many complain of the providences of God when disease and death
remove members of the household; but it is unjust to charge God with
what is but the sure result of their own transgression of natural laws.
Fashionable mothers clothe their little girls as unhealthfully as they
do themselves. Their waists are compressed at an early age, and the
limbs are left with but slight protection, when the forces of nature need
every advantage to enable them to perfect the physical frame. The
limbs were not formed to endure exposure, as was the face. Children
who are clothed according to fashion cannot be out-doors much, unless
the weather is mild. Therefore they are kept in ill-ventilated rooms, for
fear of the cold; and well they may be, with their fashionable style of
clothing. But if they were comfortably clothed, it would not harm them
to exercise freely in the open air summer or winter. Unhealthful dress
brings many a child to a state of invalidism, or, which in many cases
may be preferable, to an early death. Thus fashion fills the homes of
its slaves with invalids, and our cemeteries with little graves.
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Mother, do you want your child to live and wear the bloom of
health? Then teach her to dress healthfully. If you love her and desire
her good, why do you teach her by your example that it is no sin to mar
the human form divine? What reason can you render to the Creator
for deforming his handiwork? Turn away from the fashion plates,