of holding the
infant's body in an erect position. Every inquiring mother--and it is
for such, and no other, that I write--will naturally and properly ask
the reason why.

The child is not born with all its bones solid. Some are mere cartilage
for a considerable time. This is the case with the bones of the back.
Now every person must see that the weight of the child's head and
shoulders, resting for a considerable time on the slender cartilaginous
spinal column, may easily bend it. And a curvature, thus given, may, and
often does, deform children for life.

Dr. Dewees mentions a nurse who, from a foolish fondness for displaying
them, made the children consigned to her charge sit perfectly upright
before they were a month old. It is truly ludicrous, he says, to see the
little creatures sitting as straight as if they were stiffened by a back
board. It is truly _horrible_, I should say, rather than ludicrous.
Crooked spines must be the inevitable consequence, if nothing worse.

The practice of bracing children, as it is called, by straps, back
boards, corsets, &c., where it has produced any effect at all, has
always had a tendency to crook the spine. This may be seen first, by
observing one shoulder to be lower than the other, and next by a
projection of the part of the shoulder blades next to the spine.
Whenever these changes begin to appear, it is time to send for a
physician, though it may often be too late to effect a cure. But on the
general subject of bracing and corseting, I have treated at sufficient
length elsewhere.

There is another error committed in carrying children in the arms. The
head of the infant is often permitted either to hang constantly on one
side, or to roll about loosely; as if it hardly belonged to the body.
In the former case there is danger of producing a habit of holding the
head upon one side, which it will be very difficult to overcome; in the
latter, the spinal marrow itself may be injured--which would produce
alarming and perhaps fatal consequences.

But all these evils, as has already been said, may be prevented, if the
hand is placed so as to support the head and shoulders. Let not the
mother, however, who reads this work, trust the matter wholly to a
nurse; she must see to it herself; else she incurs a most fearful
responsibility. The suggestions I have made are the more important in
the case of children either very fleshy or very feeble, and of those
disposed to rickets or scrofu