Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/757

Rh outer toes under the sole of the foot, so that the first or great toe alone retains its normal position, and a narrow point is produced in front: 2. Compressing the roots of the toes and the heel downward and toward one another so as greatly to shorten the foot, and produce a deep transverse fold in the middle of the sole (Fig. 14). The whole has now the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot, and affords a very inefficient organ of support, as the peculiar tottering gait of those possessing it clearly shows.

But strange as this custom seems to us, it is only a slight step in excess of what the majority of people in Europe subject themselves and their children to. From personal observation of a large number of feet of persons of all ages and of all classes of society in our own country, I do not hesitate to say that there are very few, if any, to be



met with that do not, in some degree, bear evidence of having been subjected to a compressing influence more or less injurious. Let any one take the trouble to inquire into what a foot ought to be. For external form look at any of the antique models—the nude Hercules Farnese or the sandaled Apollo Belvedere; watch the beautiful freedom of motion in the wide-spreading toes of an infant; consider the wonderful mechanical contrivances for combining strength with mobility, firmness with flexibility; the numerous bones, articulations, ligaments; the great toe, with seven special muscles to give it that versatility of motion which was intended that it should possess—and then see what a miserable, stiffened, distorted thing is this same foot, when it has been submitted for a number of years to the "improving" process to which our civilization condemns it: the toes all squeezed and flattened against each other; the great toe no longer in its normal position, but turned outward, pressing so upon the others that one or