On the advantages of exercise in some spinal deviations, addressed to Sir Benjamin Brodie ... / by A.M. Bureaud Riofrey.

Date:
[1837]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the advantages of exercise in some spinal deviations, addressed to Sir Benjamin Brodie ... / by A.M. Bureaud Riofrey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    4/40 (page 4)
    ON SPINAL DEVIATIONS, out of doors, and often none at all, except in a carriage. Then, for the most part, the latter spend much more of their time in actual study than the former. The mind is over educated at the expence of the physical structure.” It is unfortunately true, that when we direct our attention to the period of life at which spinal deviations are made manifest, we quickly perceive they are the result of our social state, and actual mode of education. Poor children, who inherit misery, as the rich inherit affluence, comforts and honours, are subjected to spinal deviations, arising from want of good nourishment, proper clothing, wholesome habitations, and hard and long labour. When the wretchedness of parents leads them to neglect their offspring, diseases of the spine are common, especially during the first seven years of life; children after this time become useful, and sometimes their occupations compel them to take exercise in the open air. Spinal complaints among the poor, caused by the influence of external and internal agents, are equally common to boys and girls, while among the rich, they are seldom known during the first years of life, and scarcely ever met with in boys ; but in all classes of society’^ the same constitutional predispositions to diseases of the spine may exist. When the inhabitants of large cities are debilitated by want, misconduct, disease, or excess of labour, their offspring must natu- rally be weak and sickly. They labour under every disadvantage, and receive a species of slow poison in the unwholesome milk flowing from the maternal breast. A proper degree of strength is not acquired, the frame is too weak to support the weight of the head and body, and the muscles lose their power of action. But when luxury and dissipation have deteriorated the consti- tution of the rich, they provide strong and healthy females to nurse their infants, and the natural constitution is improved by good nourishment. Spinal deviations are scarcely ever met with in the peasantry