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a mechanical instrument maker, and to a needless use of 
expensive contrivances of little or no value. Therefore the 
Society would see that he simply wished to point out what he 
had observed, to challenge further enquiry, and if the truth 
of what he alleged was established, such cases would be 
prevented from becoming subject to professional treatment. 
He spoke first of the bowed legs of young children, 
where the bowing is outwards above the outer ankle, giving 
the child great facility in placing the soles of its feet 
together. Hr. Crompton believed that this deformity does 
not arise, as is commonly supposed, from the child having 
been placed on its feet too early, when the legs were too 
weak to support the body ; for he has seen the deformity 
existing to a considerable extent in carefully watched 
children before they had been put to the ground to walk. 
Whilst looking at the legs of a child thus bowed, and 
whilst it was sitting on its mother’s knee, he saw it, as soon 
as ever its stockings were removed, begin to rub the sole of 
one foot against that of the other with evident delight. 
It immediately occurred to him that this habit might 
explain this common deformity. He had this child watched, 
as well as others similarly deformed, in succeeding years, 
and found not only that the children did this on every op- 
portunity when their feet were naked, but that some of them 
actually slept with the sole of one foot against that of the 
other. Hr. Crompton believed that in this habit carried to 
JL 
excess was to be found the explanation of this common 
deformity, and that the deformity would never happen if 
the legs were examined from time to time during the first 
year of life ; and if observed to be becoming bowed, the 
child were prevented from indulging the habit by making 
it wear either a sock or light shoes in bed till the habit 
was broken ; or better still, to wrap one leg from the knee 
to the foot in a stoutish padding, so that the soles could not 
be brought into apposition. 
