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MY BRKATHTSG SYSTKM

simultaneously severely condemning the use of all the rest Sometimes exclusive abdominal or diaphragmatic breatliing is esteemed the only saving method; sometimes the so-called lateral costal breathing; now tlie upper costal and now the inferior costal method ; now and tlien the clavicular or collar-bone form of breatliing.

It is only in the case of defects or ailments of the chest that certain special parts of the lungs should be favoured, either witli a view to dcveloping such defective parts, or because it would be dangerous to usc any part of the lung that inay have been injured.

As to abdominal breathing, it is true that this is almost sufficient when one is sleeping, or when sitting bent over the writing-desk, or when reading in the easy chair, because in such cases the need of air, or rather of change of gases, is only very smali. But as soon as one moves, morę air is immediately necded, and it will then be of advantage to employ the entire thorax. And if this has grown rigid and immovable, so much the worse for its possessor. A German arm-chair philosopher has found that of 490 cubic centi-metres of air inhalcd, only 170 are due to the movemcnt of the diaphragm and 320 to the expansion of the chest. I should think it must have been his own defective respiratory faculty which he ineasured, because I am surę that the above-mentoned proportion in a wcll-developcd athlete or oarsman, who can inhale 6,000 cubic centimetres, would be a still stronger argument for thoracic expansion. It was formerly a common view that the abdominal form of breathing was the natural one for men, the upper chest form for women. But this view is ąuite erroneous and only caused by bad habit. When the lower ribs and the wholc abdo-men are laced immovably in a corset, the woman is, of course, compelled to restrict herself to the employment of the upper chest method alone. And it is for the purpose of repairing

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