4125. "I never see a poor child dressed as a young Highlander, or in any fancy dress, with its uncomfortable look and naked appearance, its poor bare knees and open neck, but I prophecy for that child, whilst I pity, a future of colds, coughs, and throat disease, and a probable death of consumption."
4126. Another important thing in the dress of children, besides keeping them warmly clad, is to keep them well, though loosely shod. The evils of a tight shoe or boot in a grown-up person is ten times multiplied in a child.
4127. Splay-feet, knock-knees, or bandy-legs, are the consequence, all of which the ignorant would certainly lay to nature, though they are nothing but the production of an art as cruel as it is ignorant, and which is entirely contrary to beauty of Form, or to Good Taste.
4128. High Shoulders.—A medical correspondent of an English paper attributes the high shoulder and the lateral curvature of the spine, which so frequently disfigures young girls, to the shoulder straps of their dresses resting below the shoulder and on the muscles of the arm, instead of being on the shoulder, which compels the wearer to be constantly hitching her shoulders to keep up her dress, an action that results in forcing up the shoulder, a distortion of the chest, and a lateral curvature of the spine.
4129. He also states that from the dangerous practice, and the consequent exposure of the chest to the cold, that inward tubercles are formed, and not unfrequently consumption is engendered.