Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/170



THE LEG.

The author of that excellent little book "Vulgarisms and other Errors of Speech," censures with just severity the American prudery which substitutes in conversation, "limb," or "extremity," for leg. The latter is the proper and the only proper word, and those who shun it so anxiously lead one to suspect that they are in the habit of indulging unbecoming thoughts. Like that literary prude, who once said to Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer:—

"Doctor, I am so much pleased with your Dictionary, and especially because you have omitted all improper words."

"So, madam," replied the caustic old humorist, "you searched for them, did you?"

In anatomy, the leg extends from the knee downward, the thigh from the knee upward, and both these, together with the foot, are called "the lower extre