chair and table suited to its size can be provided; if it falls off that chair, no harm will be done; but to fasten a child in one position may produce serious evil.
When by crawling about the child has acquired sufficient strength, it will not only sit up, but it will catch hold of tables and chairs, stand up, and try to walk by catching at one object after another. Before this takes place any attempts to teach it to walk are highly injurious, and both parents and nurses should take this thoroughly to heart; for both, either for their own amusement or from vanity, are very fond of encouraging the little one to walk "like a man," and show off this too precocious accomplishment.
Among the poor, children are put on their feet too young, because the mother is too lazy or too busy to carry them, and also from motives of vanity, and this is the chief cause of the appalling number of bow legs, flat feet, and other deformities which we see in our walks abroad. Without any attempts to teach it, the child would walk when it reaches the proper stage of development, because it has inherited the capacity to do so, and because it is urged to do so in imitation of others.
Cases in which this has taken place are rare, because the vast majority of people, educated or not, are imbued with the erroneous notion that it is necessary to hurry up Nature in this respect; but a distinguished physician informed Dr. Bastian that up to the age of two years his daughter had never walked a step, nor even tried to walk, when
