1884.] Disadvantages of the Upright Position. 7 
smallest part of the parturient bony canal, the moment we pass 
to erect animals the greater relative increase is there in the cran- 
ial size with coexisting decrease in the area of the outlet. This 
altered condition of things has caused the death of millions of 
otherwise perfectly healthy and well-formed human mothers and 
children. The palzontologist might tell us if some such phe- 
nomenon of ischial approximation by natural mechanical causes 
has not caused the probable extinction of whole genera of verte- 
brates. If we are to believe that for our original sin the pangs 
and labor at term were increased, and also believe in the dispro- 
portionate contraction of the pelvic space being an efficient cause 
of the same difficulties of parturition, the logical inference is in- 
evitable that man’s original sin consisted in his getting upon his 
hind legs. 
Something of the changes noticed in the angle at which the 
head of the femur is set upon the shaft at different ages, is also 
noticeable phylogenetically. The neck of the femur in the child 
is obliquely placed, but in the adult is less so, and in advanced 
age tends to form a right angle with the socket. Both in the ad- 
vance of age in the individual and the tendency of an animal to 
assume more and more the upright posture, this change of angle 
seems attributable to no other cause than bodily weight against 
the femoral heads. 
This subject is not without direct application. Gynzcologists 
cause their patients to assume what is called the knee chest posi- 
tion, a prone one, for the purpose of restoring uteri to something 
near a natural position. Brown-Sequard recommends drawing 
away the blood from the spine in myelitis, or spinal congestion, 
by placing the patient on his abdomen or side with hands and feet 
somewhat dependent. The liability to spina-bifida is greatest in 
the human infant through the stress thrown upon the spine, and 
the absence of delivery troubles among lower races have refer- 
ence to discrepancy between pelvic and cranial sizes not having 
been reached by those races. The Sandwich island mother has 
difficult delivery only when her progeny is half white, that breed 
being larger in the forehead than the native child. 
The mechanism of the body, when fully recognized as mech- 
anism and nothing else, and as governed by mechanical laws, 
physical as well as chemical influences, will place forthcoming 
physiological studies upon a broader, safer foundation, and result 
