Here should the laced, straitened and waisted dandy or dandyess, whose beau-ideal of figure rests within the narrow span of slimness, and to whom any other view of the body is out of taste, out of conception, impossible -- here should they learn, while studying the flow and superfluity of a more polished age than their own, to doubt, at least, their sovereign and exclusive right to rack, and wrench, and torture poor human nature.
Source: wiktionary