I have also several such reports from the circus--perhaps
exceptions. I look upon this as a not impossible result of muscular
exertion in women, the development of muscle, muscular attachments, and
bony frame leading to approximation to the male."
In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir
Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of
Edinburgh, used to criticise cycling on this score, not as regards its
development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards
local rigidity unfavourable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps,
whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this
criticism, but it is probably worth noting.
On the other hand, while exercise of certain muscles may interfere
obscurely or mechanically with motherhood, we are to remember that the
muscles of the abdomen are indeed the accessory muscles of motherhood,
and therefore specially to be considered. According to Mosso of Turin,
it is only in modern times that civilized woman shows the comparative
weakness of these muscles which is indeed commonly to be found. There is
verily no sign of it in the Venus of Milo, as any one can see. That
statue represents very highly developed abdominal muscles in a woman
less notably muscular elsewhere. The muscles lie near the skin, the
disposition of fat being very small, yet the woman is distinctively
maternal in type, and every kind of aesthetic praise that may be showered
upon the statue may be supplemented by the encomiums of the physiologist
and the worshipper of motherhood.
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