in Medicine, is when any part of the human body remarkably deviates from its natural shape or position. Distortions of different parts may arise either from a convulsion or palsy; though sometimes a terrible distortion in the shape of the whole body hath arisen merely from carelessness and ill habits. Mr Winiflow, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, gives a very remarkable account of a lady of quality, whom he had known to be perfectly straight for several years; but who taking afterwards to a sedentary course of life, got a custom of dressing herself very carelessly, and of leaning as she fat, either forwards or to a side. It was not many months before she found it painful and troublesome to stand or sit upright; and soon afterwards she found an inequality in the lower part of the back bone. Alarmed at this, she consulted the gentleman who gave the account. To prevent the increase of the malady, he Distortion, ordered her to wear a particular sort of jumps instead of stays, and had a pad of a proper size applied: but this was soon neglected; and the consequence was, that in a little time the back bone became more and more crooked, and at length bent itself sidewise in two contrary directions, so as to represent the figure of the Roman S; and the lady, still refusing to take the proper measures, lost a fourth part of her height; and continued for the remainder of her life, not only crooked from right to left, and from left to right, but so oddly folded together, that the first of the false ribs on one side approached very near the crest of the os ilium on that side, and the visceræ of the lower belly became strangely pushed out of their regular places to the opposite side; and the stomach itself was so strongly compressed, that whatever she swallowed seemed to her to fall into two separate cavities.