Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/415

Rh very little in the twenty-four hours, and is not long enough to produce the deformity. Moreover, not many miles away, at Saltcoats, on the Ayrshire coast, all the women carry their babies in precisely the same manner as in Glasgow, and yet not a single case of rachitis or osteomalacia is to be seen there. The people of Saltcoats, however, are Scotch. The same method of carrying babies is quite common over all the south and west of Scotland, yet nowhere else in the country, except in Glasgow, are so many horrible cases of rachitis or of osteomalacia to be seen.

Some persons, observing that many of the Glasgow mothers, whether married or unmarried, are workers in the mills—cotton, woolen, linen, and jute mills—are of the opinion that there is something in their employment that promotes bandy-leggedness. But, so far as I could observe, the children of such women were no more rickety than the children of women in other occupations. The mills in Great Britain are, so far as their hygienic condition is concerned, far better provided for than the mills of any other country in the world; they are looked after by the Government, and regularly visited by a competent and responsible inspector. Mill-workers have, nowadays, an easy, comfortable, and healthful occupation, and really there is nothing in mill-work to deform or injure either the women or their children.

Many lay the blame for the trouble upon the air. Glasgow air does not appear to be different from other air, and is certainly no worse than that of a dozen other manufacturing cities where no unusual bandy-leggedness exists. Consideration of this point may, then, be dismissed at once.

The writer believes that an adequate explanation for the affliction may be found in the habits of the Irish people. It is well known that all over the south and west of Ireland thousands of the peasantry live in mud cabins, which are for the most part several feet below the level of the surrounding soil, many of them destitute of windows, doors, and chimneys, the places of which are supplied by simple holes. The cabins are warmed by a peat-fire in the center of the burrow under the hole in the roof. The fuel is got from the adjacent bog, and its smoke would speedily blear and blind the eyes of any stranger who might venture to go inside. Such holes are continually damp, and are hot-beds (or rather cold beds) of rheumatism, rickets, osteomalacia, and various other diseases. There are generally half a dozen or more miserable children, huddled together for mutual warmth in the cold months, along with the parents, in addition to whom there is generally at least one full-grown pig, with perhaps a litter of young ones. The food of the family consists chiefly or entirely of potatoes, and it is seldom indeed, that any of the members see bread or meat, although occasionally a little fish, in the shape of eels from the adjacent "bog-holes," may find its way to their mouths.