Started in Imperial China in the 10th or 11th century, upper-class court dancers would wrap their feet to make them permanently smaller.

Although this made it difficult for a woman to walk, small feet indicated that a woman’s husband did not need his wife’s labor. To make the feet even smaller, sometimes the baby’s feet were broken and wrapped tightly. Some baby’s toes were cut off! Footbinding was banned by the Chinese government in 1911, but continued to be practiced in some places for several decades, as shown in the picture above. ...

Infant swaddling, an old practice that has recently gained popularity in the United States, may be linked to increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). A new review of 760 SIDS cases in the journal Pediatrics found that infants who were swaddled - wrapped in light cloth with only the head exposed - were about a third more likely to die from SIDS. The risk was higher among infants sleeping on their stomachs or sides, positions already known to be more dangerous for sleeping babies. SIDS risk among swaddled infants was also higher for children older than 6 months, suggesting that swaddling should be stopped when babies are able to start rolling over. The researchers cautioned that these results should be taken with a grain of salt ...