THE BODY TEMPLE 41 



metry. This frame must be not only firm, but flexible, 

 in order to enable us to use our bodies easily in the 

 great variety of movements required of them. To meet 

 this requirement, the skeleton is possessed of a large 

 number of separate bones, two hundred in all, which 

 are held together by bands, or ligaments, forming 

 joints. In early infancy the bones are soft and 

 flexible; but in adult life they become hard and 

 rigid. In old age their composition is changed in 

 such a way that they become brittle, and are easily 

 broken. 



The bones are not entirely matured until some years 

 after the body ceases to grow in height, or about the 

 age of twenty to twenty-five. During the years of 

 development, the soft bones may be easily bent out of 

 shape by bad positions in sleeping or sitting, or by 

 improper clothing. It is in this way that curvatures 

 of the spine, round shoulders, narrow waists, and other 

 deformities are produced, illustrated elsewhere in this 

 work. 



Cultivated Deformities.— Some of the most con- 

 spicuous examples of deformities produced by artificial 

 means, are the feet of fashionable Chinese women, 

 which are converted into queer stumps by the opera- 

 tion of bandaging, which doubles the toes completely 

 under the feet; the heads of certain tribes of North 

 American Indians, which are flattened by the compres- 

 sion of a board upon the forehead, or elongated into 

 the shape of a cone by the application of firm band- 

 ages; and the wasp-like waist of the fashionable civil- 

 ized woman, whose perverted ideas of beauty lead her 

 to the vain and foolish attempt to improve the master- 

 piece of the great Artist by distorting it into a form 

 which, though symmetry in an insect, is deformity in 



