512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mucli is said in tlie book as to what the effects are, but nothing 

 as to the treatment of these effects. And why shouhl there be ? 

 Such information should be confined to medical works. On one 

 of the pages of this book is the following : " Children's bones have 

 more gristle than those of older people ; so children's bones bend 

 easily. I know a lady who has one leg shorter than the other. 

 This makes her lame, and she has to wear a boot with iron sup- 

 ports three or four inches high in order to walk at all. One day 

 she told me how she became lame. ' I remember/ she said, ' when 

 I was between three and four years old, sitting one day in my 

 high-chair at the table, and twisting one foot under the little step 

 of the chair. The next morning I felt lame, but nobody could 

 tell what was the matter. At last the doctors found out that the 

 trouble all came from that twist. It had gone too far to be 

 cured.' " 



The writer of this account would have the reader believe that 

 the hip-joint disease which the lady had, and which caused the 

 shortening of three or four inches in one leg, resulted because 

 there is more gristle in the bones of children than in those of 

 adults, and because on one occasion a child between the ages of 

 three and four years twisted its foot under the little step of a 

 high-chair. This twisting, it is presumed, injured the gristle 

 somewhere in the leg, and so caused deformity. How many little 

 children are there who do not twist their feet under the little 

 steps, as they sit in their high-chairs ? In how few does hip- joint 

 disease result. If a child runs the risk of such an affliction every 

 time the foot is twisted under the little step, then the children of 

 nowadays are puny folk. The truth is, such a result is rare, if it 

 ever happens with a healthy child. Still, if a child can be taught 

 to sit straight in its chair, with feet on a level and side by side, 

 well and good. Most physicians, I take it, would be apt to say in 

 regard to this reported case of deformity : " If such a result fol- 

 lowed such a twisting, in all probability the child was not strong 

 and healthy, but of a rachitic or rickety tendency. In such chil- 

 dren the bones and ligaments are unusually soft and quite easily 

 bend out of shape." 



On another page of this book is a pretty picture of a mill, 

 which the text tells us is a snuff-mill. The writer says that after 

 entering the mill " the smell of the tobacco was so strong that I 

 had to go to the door many times for a breath of pure air. I 

 asked the man if it did not make him sick to work there. He said : 

 ' It made me very sick for the first few weeks. Then I began to 

 get used to it, and now I don't mind it.' " Then the writer adds : 

 " He was like the boys who try to learn to smoke. It almost al- 

 ways make them sick at first ; but they think it will be manly to 

 keep on. At last they get used to it." Who will say that the 



