"Female
patients are wonderfully monotonous in this matter; they have a
programme of evasions; and whether the patient is a lady or a housemaid,
she seldom varies from that programme. You find her breathing life's air
with half a bellows, and you tell her so. 'Oh, no,' says she; and does
the gigantic feat of contraction we witnessed that evening at your
house. But, on inquiry, you learn there is a raw red line ploughed
in her flesh by the cruel stays. 'What is that?' you ask, and flatter
yourself you have pinned her. Not a bit. 'That was the last pair. I
changed them, because they hurt me.' Driven out of that by proofs of
recent laceration, they say, 'If I leave them off I should catch my
death of cold,' which is equivalent to saying there is no flannel in the
shops, no common sense nor needles at home."
He then laid before him some large French plates, showing the organs
of the human trunk, and bade him observe in how small a space, and with
what skill, the Creator has packed so many large yet delicate organs,
so that they should be free and secure from friction, though so close to
each other. He showed him the liver, an organ weighing four pounds, and
of large circumference; the lungs, a very large organ, suspended in the
chest and impatient of pressure; the heart, the stomach, the spleen, all
of them too closely and artfully packed to bear any further compression.
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