The treatment should therefore first of all be directed to the nourishment of the child. To restore the natural position of the parts, when the child is lying the legs should be straightened, a pad put between the knees, and the ankles approached to one another by a bandage. For walking, an apparatus may be worn. A suitable one consists of a belt of steel round the hips, from each side of which a rod passes down the outside of the leg to be fixed in the outer side of the shoe. The rod should be of steel, bent outwards, and jointed at the knee. Opposite the knee-joint a broad elastic band should pass round the knee and be secured to the rod, so as to keep the knee from bending inwards. A bandage should also be similarly adapted in the middle of the thigh and in the middle of the leg. The apparatus must be used for many months before the cure is nearly complete. Care must be taken that the knee-joint is not allowed to become stiff through wearing the apparatus.
consist in a bending of the legs outwards, and are usually the result of a soft condition of the bone as in rickets. In such a case adopt the treatment for rickets (p. 71). Mechanical contrivances similar to that de scribed above are in use for this affection also, though they are valuable mainly before the bones are quite firm. The condition can be greatly improved by operation.
Clubbed Hands are a rare defect; and the principles of their treatment are the same as those for club-foot.
Fingers may be drawn down towards the palm and there fixed by shortening of the tendons. This may have been due to burns of the palm of the hand and the contraction in healing, or it may have been caused by inflam mation in the sheath of the tendon.
Rubbing and manipulation may do a great deal of good ; often division of the tendon is required. To prevent contraction of the fingers during healing of a wound or burn, the finger should be kept straight by a splint.
Supernumerary Fingers and Toes are extra fingers and toes, often not properly de veloped, with which children are sometimes born. This deformity is frequently hereditary. The extra fingers or toes can easily be removed by a surgeon if necessary. Their possession has sometimes been known to cause such mental distress and vexation to sensitive girls as to lead to convulsions and frequent attacks of fits like epilepsy, a mere allusion to the deformity being sufficient to bring on a hysterical attack. On the removal of the annoyance by an opera tion, the tendency to fits has often completely disappeared.
off many poles or processes, and are accordingly called multipolar. In the same figure f repre sents three cells from the large brain (cerebrum). They are triangular in shape, and give off a process from each angle, and another from the centre of the base of the cell. They are called pyramidal nerve-cells from their shape, and