QUARTERLY JOURNAL
OF
SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART.
OCT.–DEC. 1827.
On the Means generally used with the Intention of curing a Stoop.[37] [◊]
WHEN the chest and the head fall forward, the most common method of trying to correct the stoop is to put on some instrument by which the shoulders and the head are held back. To operate upon the shoulders, the common back-collar is applied, and to hold back the head, a riband is brought over the forehead and fastened to the collar.
While these instruments are kept on, the figure looks straight, though stiff and constrained; but the moment they are taken off, both the head and the shoulders fall more forward, than before their application. Many examples of the bad effect of artificially supporting the head might be offered. The following, although observed in the figure of a horse, is very demonstrative. When the rein (called the bearing-rein), by which the head of a carriage-horse is reared up, with the intention of giving him a showy figure, is loosened, the head immediately falls forward, and the neck, instead of preserving the fine arch that is so much admired, droops between the shoulders. Looking to this effect, we should at first be inclined to condemn the practice followed by horse-dealers, of reining up the head of a young horse in the stable, by means of the apparatus called a dumb-jockey. But on examining into this mode of fixing the head, it will be found to operate on a different principle from the bearing-rein. Instead of a [p238] simple bit, such as the horse in harness can lean his head upon, without suffering pain, a bit, calculated to tease and fret, is put into the young horse’s mouth. To relieve himself from the irritation produced by this, and which is increased by the constant pull of the elastic piece of iron to which the rein is fastened, he curls up his neck, and thus brings all the muscles of the back of the neck into strong action, instead of allowing their power to be superseded by the artificial support afforded by the bearing-rein to the horse in harness[38].
Many different contrivances, but all acting nearly on the same principle as the bearing-rein, have been proposed as means for obliging a girl to keep her head erect.
