Page:A Treatise on the Diseases of the Bones.djvu/94

78 Spine proceeds with much greater rapidity in the young than it does either in the adult or aged subject. It is also more frequently met with in female than in male children, and more especially in those who are in the middle and higher ranks of society.

In former times when the young of the female sex were not shackled by tight stays and bands, which grasp the lower portions of the chest; or tortured by back-boards, stocks, and other detestable inventions of the mantua-maker and dancing-master, interstitial absorption of the spine was a comparatively rare affection; but in the present day there are few families in which it is not to be met with. To many mothers, and even to many medical men, its silent progress proves a source of much and painful anxiety. In itself the affection is not attended with danger, and may be remedied if attended to in time; but when it is allowed to proceed, without any effort being made to counteract it, it is apt to prove detrimental, in a secondary way, by interfering with the important functions of respiration, circulation, and digestion.

Interstitial absorption of the bodies of the