Rough Handling of Children.
By The Lancet
THE causes of joint diseases in childhood are frequently obscure, but this much is certain, that the rough handling which children receive at the hands of ignorant parents or careless nurses has much to do with the matter. Stand on any street corner and notice how children are handled. Here comes a lady with a three-year-old girl; she is walking twice as fast as she should, and the child is over-exerting itself to keep pace; every time the child lags the mother gives it a sudden and unexpected lurch, which is enough to throw its shoulder out, to say nothing of bruising the delicate structures of the joints; a gutter is reached; instead of giving the little toddler time to get over in its own way or properly lifting it, the mother raises it from the ground by one hand, its whole weight depending from one upper extremity, and with a spring, which twists the child's body as far around as the joints will permit, it is landed, after a course of four or five feet through the air, on the other side. Here is a girl twelve years old with a baby of one year in her arms. The baby sits on the girl's arm without support to its back. This would be a hard enough position to maintain were the girl standing still, but she is walking rapidly and the little one has to gather the entire strength of its muscular system to adapt itself to the changing bases of support, to say nothing of adjusting its little body to sudden leaps and darts on the part of its wayward nurse. Sometimes during a sudden advance you will see a part of the babe a foot in advance of its head and trunk, which have to be brought up by a powerful and sudden action of the muscles of the trunk and neck. Probably not one child in one hundred is properly handled.—The Lancet.