Bosom Foe

A usually mild-mannered, publicity-shunning gynecologist stepped out of character last week and lashed out at the modern U.S. preoccupation with the female bust. Anthropologists and sociologists have already tackled this question as it concerns the male. But Dr. Goodrich C. Schauffler, who teaches at the University of Oregon and practices in Portland, told a Chicago congress on gynecology and obstetrics that it has grave medical effects on the female:

"Anomalies of the breast in childhood . . . call for more attention from the physician in the present age because of accelerated trends contingent upon the Hollywood influences and the insane emphasis by modern advertising and the press upon this semi-respectable sex appendage. The array of bosoms now available to the naked eye is simply appalling, and it has its results early and late.

"Only last week I was asked to see a girl of ten, scarcely into adolescence, who was wearing miniature falsies and was already the subject of a bosom inferiority complex ... As physicians we must under no circumstances disregard the psychic--I might even say the psychotic--influence of such matters upon our youngsters. It can be exceedingly serious. Recently in my own practice I had one attempted suicide and several rather serious and total derangements contingent upon real or fancied breast irregularities."

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