Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/164

 generality of instances, however, a child is put on his feet too soon, and the bones at that tender age, being very flexible, bend, causing bowed and bandy legs; and the knees, being weak, approximate too closely together, and thus they become knock-kneed.

This advice of not putting a child early on his feet, I must strongly insist on, as so many mothers are so ridiculously ambitious that their young ones should walk early, that they should walk before other children have attempted to do so, have frequently caused the above lamentable deformities! 172. Do you approve of perambulators?

I do not, for two reasons: first, because when a child is strong enough, he had better walk as much as he will; and, secondly, the motion is not so good, and the muscles are not so much put in action, and consequently cannot be so well developed, as when he is carried. A perambulator is very apt to make a child stoop, and to make him both crooked and round-shouldered. He is cramped by being so long in one position. It is painful to notice a babe a few months old in one of these new-fangled carriages. His little head is bobbing about, first on one side and then on the other—at one moment it is dropping on his chest, the next it is forcibly jolted behind: he looks, and doubtless feels, wretched and uncomfortable. Again, these perambulators are dangerous in crowded thoroughfares. They are a public nuisance, inasmuch as they are wheeled against and between people's legs, and are a fruitful source of the breaking of shins, of the spraining of ankles, of the crushing of corns, and of the ruffling of the tempers of the foot-passengers who unfortunately come within their reach; while, in all probability, the gaping nurses are staring another way, and every way indeed but the right!

Besides, in very cold weather, or in a very young infant, the warmth of the nurse's body, while he is being carried,