Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].
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which I have received as to the effect of physical exercises on the bust. There are no exercises which directly promote the growth of the mammary glands or their recovery after lactation. But a wisely selected course of general physical culture has an admirable effect on the whole glandular structure, and so also on the breasts. But, in my opinion, the best of all indirect methods of promoting the adequacy and beauty of the bust, is normal sexual activity, and this is also the best prescription for recovery after lactation. There are numerous cases of defective bust development which are the result of innate or acquired constitutional anomalies. A breast set wrongly on the thorax can be as little influenced or improved by gymnastic methods as a crooked nose or deformed ears. The same is true of positively misshapen breasts. If these have been either acquired or developed from the earliest years, neither exercises nor massage can cure them, and highly skilled surgery alone can avail hereS*0) But breasts which remain childishly undeveloped, though free from positive deformities, may be brought to maturity far more through massage, especially vibro-massage, and diathermy than through any form of gymnastics. And the treatment should not be limited to diathermy and local massage, but aim at eradicating the constitutional cause— the endocrine inadequacy or imbalance—by promoting full functional activity of the ovaries and of the group of syner- gistic glands which interact with the ovaries.* A profound constitutional change takes place throughout woman's organism during pregnancy, and in the most " natural " and normal manner. But this natural fulfilment occurs less easily in women with small, flat and flabby breasts, for in such cases there is generally a corresponding inadequacy or infantilism of the inner genital organs. Nor is pregnancy in itself always able to make inadequate breasts fully functional and fit for suckling. Moreover, any vigorous " local" gymnastics during pregnancy would * Cf. " Fertility and Sterility in Marriage," Chapters VI. and VII., pp. 167-206.