Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/200

188 with greater facility a load which it was drawing. On themselves they commence the practice, because somebody has set the example; then they get accustomed to the impediment, and think they can not get on without it. Drinking is learned by just the same absurd process.

I had a workingman once in my employ who would undertake no vigorous effort until he had tightened his belt. Once I got him to test what he could lift with and without the belt, and he was obliged himself to admit that he could do more without it than with it; but, he argued, he could not get on without it. That is what ladies say about corsets.

Respecting this belt for boys and men, there is a word more I must say which is of serious import. When they put on the belt for the sake of performing some feat of strength, they effect another dangerous mischief. Compressing the abdomen, they force, during the exertion, the contents of the abdominal cavity downward under pressure, giving no chance to resilience back again after the exertion or shock. In this way they frequently cause hernia or rupture. I have seen, professionally, several instances of this occurrence in boys, and among workmen who wear belts this accidental disease is so common that it is the rule rather than the exception to find it present.

Other forms of tight pressure upon the body are open to serious if not to equal objection. The wearing of shoes which compress and distort the feet is a singularly injurious custom. Suppose I said that nine tenths of the feet of the members of an English community were rendered misshapen by the boots and shoes worn, the statement would seem extreme, but it would be within the truth. The pointed shoe or boot is the most signal instance of a mischievous instrument designed for the torture of feet. In this shoe the great-toe is forced out of its natural line toward the other toes, giving a reverse curve from what is natural to the terminal part of the inner side of the foot, while all the other toes are compressed together toward the great-toe, the whole producing a wedge-like form of foot which is altogether apart from the natural. Such a foot has lost its expanse of tread; such a foot has lost its elastic resistance; such a foot has lost the strength of its arch to a very considerable degree; such a foot, by the irregular and unusual pressure on certain points of its surface, has become hard at those points, and is easily affected with corns and. bunions. Lastly, such a foot becomes badly nourished, and the pressure exerted upon it interferes with its circulation and nutrition. It ceases to be an instrument upon which the body can sustain itself with grace and with easiness of movement, even in early life; while in mature life and in old age it becomes a foot which is absolutely unsafe, and which causes much of that irregular, hobbling tread which often renders so peculiar the gait of persons who have passed their meridian.

It sometimes happens for a time that these mistakes in regard to