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Throughout the middle ages and later restraining chairs were much in vogue, and almost every nursery today shows some form of this chair. The painting, in which a restraining chair is depicted, is by an unknown sixteenth century master and shows the children of the Duke of Savoy. The picture is in Turin. This chair is a handsome one befitting the position and wealth of the parents. It has a richly upholstered back and a hinged front secured by two catches. Children were placed in these chairs and left exposed to flies and insects, and in some of them the child had to stand up all the time. In writing about one kind of a restraining apparatus, in his "Children's Book," good old Felix Würtz made the following observation:
There are stools for children to stand in, in which they can turn round any way, when Mothers or Nurses see