that a naturally active child can be kept at rest. The little patient should live in the open air as much as possible.
The static form of Genu Valgum usually occurs in young adolescents, especially in anaemic nurse-girls, young bricklayers, and young people who have outgrown their strength, yet have to carry heavy weights. Normally in the erect posture the weight of the body is passed through the outer condyle of the femur rather than the inner, and this latter is lengthened to keep the plane of the knee-joint horizontal. This throws considerable strain on the internal lateral ligament of the knee-joint, and after standing of long duration or with undue weight the muscles of the inner side of the limb also become over-fatigued. Thus the ligament gradually becomes stretched, giving the knee undue mobility from side to side. If the condition be not attended to, the outer condyle becomes gradually atrophied, owing to the increased weight transmitted through it, and the inner condyle becomes lengthened. These changes are the direct outcome of a general law, namely, that diminished pressure results in increased growth, increased pressure in diminished growth. The best example of the former principle is the rapid growth that takes place in the child that is confined to bed during a prolonged illness. The distorted, stunted, shortened and fashionable foot of the Chinese lady is an example of the latter. Flat-foot (see Club-Foot) and lateral curvature of the spine, scoliosis, are often associated with this form of Genu Valgum, the former being due to relaxation of ligaments, the latter being compensatory where the deformity only affects one leg, though often found merely in association with the more common bilateral variety. In the early stages of the static form attention to general health, massage and change of air, will often effect a cure. But in the more aggravated forms an apparatus is needed. This usually consists of an outside iron rod, jointed at the knee, attached above to a pelvic band and below to the heel of the boot. By the gradual tightening of padded straps passing round the limbs the bones can be drawn by degrees into a more natural position. But if the patient has reached such an age that the deformity is fixed, then the only remedy is that of operation.
BOWLES, SAMUEL (1826–1878), American journalist, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 9th of February 1826. He was the son of Samuel Bowles (1779–1851) of the same city, who had established the weekly Springfield Republican in 1824. The daily issue was begun in 1844, as an evening newspaper, afterwards becoming a morning journal. To its service Samuel Bowles, junior, devoted his life (with the exception of a brief period during which he was in charge of a daily in Boston), and he gave the paper a national reputation by the vigour, incisiveness and independence of its editorial utterances, and the concise and convenient arrangement of its local and general news-matter. During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Grant his paper represented anti-administration or “Liberal Republican” opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favoured the claims of Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics. Bowles died at Springfield on the 16th of January 1878. During his lifetime, and subsequently, the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of his maxims being “put it all in the first paragraph.” Bowles published two books of travel, Across the Continent (1865) and The Switzerland of America (1869), which were combined into one volume under the title Our New West (1869). He was succeeded as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Republican by his son Samuel Bowles (b. 1851).
A eulogistic Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (2 vols., New York, 1885), by George S. Merriam, is virtually a history of American political movements after the compromise of 1850.
BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE (1762–1850), English poet and
critic, was born at King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire, of which
his father was vicar, on the 24th of September 1762. At the age
of fourteen he entered Winchester school, the head-master at
the time being Dr Joseph Warton. In 1781 he left as captain
of the school, and proceeded to Trinity College, Oxford, where
he had gained a scholarship. Two years later he won the chancellor’s
prize for Latin verse. In 1789 he published, in a small
quarto volume, Fourteen Sonnets, which met with considerable
favour at the time, and were hailed with delight by Coleridge and
his young contemporaries. The Sonnets even in form were a
revival, a return to the older and purer poetic style, and by their
grace of expression, melodious versification, tender tone of feeling
and vivid appreciation of the life and beauty of nature, stood
out in strong contrast to the elaborated commonplaces which
at that time formed the bulk of English poetry. After taking
his degree at Oxford he entered the Church, and was appointed
in 1792 to the vicarage of Chicklade in Wiltshire. In 1797 he
received the vicarage of Dumbleton in Gloucestershire, and
in 1804 was presented to the vicarage of Bremhill in Wiltshire.
In the same year he was collated by Bishop Douglas to a prebendal
stall in the cathedral of Salisbury. In 1818 he was made
chaplain to the prince regent, and in 1828 he was elected
residentiary canon of Salisbury. He died at Salisbury on the
7th of April 1850, aged 88.
The longer poems published by Bowles are not of a very high standard, though all are distinguished by purity of imagination, cultured and graceful diction, and great tenderness of feeling. The most extensive were The Spirit of Discovery (1804), which was mercilessly ridiculed by Byron; The Missionary of the Andes (1815); The Grave of the Last Saxon (1822); and St John in Patmos (1833). Bowles is perhaps more celebrated as a critic of poetry than as a poet. In 1806 he published an edition of Pope’s works with notes and an essay on the poetical character of Pope. In this essay he laid down certain canons as to poetic imagery which, subject to some modification, have been since recognized as true and valuable, but which were received at the time with strong opposition by all admirers of Pope and his style. The “Pope and Bowles” controversy brought into sharp contrast the opposing views of poetry, which may be roughly described as the natural and the artificial. Bowles maintained that images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art; and that in the highest kinds of poetry the themes or passions handled should be of the general or elemental kind, and not the transient manners of any society. These positions were vigorously assailed by Byron, Campbell, Roscoe and others of less note, while for a time Bowles was almost solitary. Hazlitt and the Blackwood critics, however, came to his assistance, and on the whole Bowles had reason to congratulate himself on having established certain principles which might serve as the basis of a true method of poetical criticism, and of having inaugurated, both by precept and by example, a new era in English poetry. Among other prose works from his prolific pen was a Life of Bishop Ken (2 vols., 1830–1831).
His Poetical Works were collected in 1855, with a memoir by G. Gilfillan.
BOWLINE (a word found in most Teutonic languages,
probably connected with the “bow” of a ship), a nautical
term for a rope leading from the edge of a sail to the bows,
for the purpose of steadying the sail when sailing close to the
wind—“on a bowline.”
BOWLING (Lat. bulla, a globe, through O. Fr. boule, ball), an indoor game played upon an alley with wooden balls and nine or ten wooden pins. It has been played for centuries in Germany and the Low Countries, where it is still in high favour, but attains its greatest popularity in the United States, whence it was introduced in colonial times from Holland. The Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam, now New York, were much addicted to it, and up to the year 1840 it was played on the green, the principal resort of the bowlers being the square just north of the Battery still called Bowling Green. The first covered alleys were made of hardened clay or of slate, but those in vogue at present are built up of alternate strips of pine and maple wood, about 1 × 3 in. in size, set on edge, and fastened together and to the bed of the alley with the nicest art of the cabinet-maker.
