Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/177

 Then touch it lightly with nitrate of silver in stick. In two or three days a dark, callous crust will cover the surface. Remove this with the knife, and apply a second time the silver nitrate. Do this for a fortnight, and if it is judiciously and regularly done, and the part protected from pressure, it will cure any corn.

Very painful corns can be helped by being covered with the following plaster, though we have little faith in its curative powers:—

Resin plaster          one ounce; Melt and stir in Muriate of ammonia      two drachms; Powdered opium         one drachm.

The strong tincture of iodine applied daily is often an efficient remedy, and another is to rub them morning and night with a piece of pumice-stone. If well softened beforehand, this latter method, though tedious, is satisfactory and painless. It is particularly suited to soft corns between the toes.

A word concerning the cutting of corns. There is a right and a wrong way to do even this. Bear in mind that the part of the growth which is thick and painful is not near the edges, but in the centre. Therefore, they should be pared into a concave or funnel shape; not flat across, but deeper in the middle than at the circumference.

A bunion is a corn on a large scale, which has its seat on the outer side of the joint of the great toe.