Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/528

512 Much is said in the book as to what the effects are, but nothing as to the treatment of these effects. And why should there be? Such information should be confined to medical works. On one of the pages of this book is the following: "Children's bones have more gristle than those of older people; so children's bones bend easily. I know a lady who has one leg shorter than the other. This makes her lame, and she has to wear a boot with iron supports three or four inches high in order to walk at all. One day she told me how she became lame. 'I remember' she said, 'when I was between three and four years old, sitting one day in my high-chair at the table, and twisting one foot under the little step of the chair. The next morning I felt lame, but nobody could tell what was the matter. At last the doctors found out that the trouble all came from that twist. It had gone too far to be cured.'"

The writer of this account would have the reader believe that the hip-joint disease which the lady had, and which caused the shortening of three or four inches in one leg, resulted because there is more gristle in the bones of children than in those of adults, and because on one occasion a child between the ages of three and four years twisted its foot under the little step of a high-chair. This twisting, it is presumed, injured the gristle somewhere in the leg, and so caused deformity. How many little children are there who do not twist their feet under the little steps, as they sit in their high-chairs? In how few does hip-joint disease result. If a child runs the risk of such an affliction every time the foot is twisted under the little step, then the children of nowadays are puny folk. The truth is, such a result is rare, if it ever happens with a healthy child. Still, if a child can be taught to sit straight in its chair, with feet on a level and side by side, well and good. Most physicians, I take it, would be apt to say in regard to this reported case of deformity: "If such a result followed such a twisting, in all probability the child was not strong and healthy, but of a rachitic or rickety tendency. In such children the bones and ligaments are unusually soft and quite easily bend out of shape."

On another page of this book is a pretty picture of a mill, which the text tells us is a snuff-mill. The writer says that after entering the mill "the smell of the tobacco was so strong that I had to go to the door many times for a breath of pure air. I asked the man if it did not make him sick to work there. He said: 'It made me very sick for the first few weeks. Then I began to get used to it, and now I don't mind it.' " Then the writer adds: "He was like the boys who try to learn to smoke. It almost always make them sick at first; but they think it will be manly to keep on. At last they get used to it." Who will say that the