Page:A Treatise on the Diseases of the Bones.djvu/95

Rh in its advanced stage has been, I have no doubt, in many cases confounded with rickets, and the peace of mind of families ruined, from the supposition that one or more of their number were tainted with that scourge of civilized society, scrofula. When a lateral curvature, however slight, is observed to take place in the spine of a young female, her friends immediately imagine that she is rickety, and proceed to inflict upon her all those descriptions of torture, which have been cunningly invented by ignorant or interested empirics, for the relief of that terrible disease. When too late, they find that their attempts have proved fruitless, and the young, and perhaps beautiful female, who, with heroic fortitude, has surrendered her person to the infliction of the screw, or the torture of the steel-corset and braces, is doomed to spend the remainder of her life a martyr to indigestion, and the diseases dependent upon it. I am convinced that examples of simple interstitial absorption of the vertebræ have been converted into incurable cases of rickets, by the improper application of bandages, braces, back-straps, steel-stays, and corsets. These engines have in general a decided effect in counteracting the proper