Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/414

402 the blame upon the water which is supplied to the city. The water comes from Loch Katrine, the lake made famous by Sir Walter Scott in "The Lady of the Lake," and is very pure and soft, containing, if the writer remembers rightly, only about half a grain of solid matter in the gallon, which solid matter consists mainly of silicic acid and a little humus in solution. It is particularly free from the lime salts which go to the formation of bone; but, even though that is the case, such an attempt at explanation displays an astonishing amount of physiological ignorance on the part of those who make it. A half-ounce of bread, more or less, additional in the diet, would make up for all the difference between a soft and a hard water. The professional opinion may, therefore, be rejected as not pertinent.

Another explanation was suggested to the writer by the Professor of Physiology in the University of Glasgow, who thought the curvature of the bones of the children was due to the abandonment of oatmeal as an article of diet by people whose ancestors were accustomed to its use, and to the substitution of wheat-bread. This seemed to be a very plausible opinion. But it can be objected that, in many places where oatmeal is hardly ever used, rachitis and osteomalacia are comparatively rare. For example, in the United States oatmeal has been comparatively little known as a food, and yet very few rachitic children are to be seen. Similarly in Edinburgh, so far as the writer could observe, oatmeal is much less used than formerly, and yet the diseases in question are not evidently on the increase; and in England, in many places where oatmeal is only considered fit food for horses, no cases of rachitis or of osteomalacia were observed. Furthermore, the ash of wheat yields more phosphoric acid than that of oats—the former contains 49·81 per cent and the latter only 43·84 per cent of that substance. It is true, however, that the ash of oats contains more lime than the ash of wheat; but then wheat contains quite enough of lime to build up bone-tissue—hence the fact that certain people do not build up sufficient bone-tissue, no matter what their diet may be, is proof that the diseases are due to a tendency in the individuals to waste, and not to assimilate these very phosphates which wheat-flour contains in abundance. This explanation, also, must therefore be dismissed as insufficient.

Another opinion ascribes the deformity to the peculiar method of carrying their babies in vogue among the women of Glasgow. A large shawl or plaid is wrapped over one shoulder and around the waist of the mother, with one turn around the baby, which is additionally supported by sitting on the mother's arm. This is a very convenient way of carrying a baby—almost as convenient as that adopted by some savage tribes, whose papooses are borne in a basket slung over the mother's back. It is only employed when the mother is out on an errand; and, though the child's legs, of course, are somewhat constrained by the shawl, the actual time during which that is the case amounts to