Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/759

Rh Grecian art, but it is more frequently shorter; the other rapidly decrease in size (Fig. 15, A). The modification which must have taken place in the form of the foot and direction of the toes before such a boot can be worn with any approach to ease is shown at C. Often it will happen that the deformity has not advanced to so great an extent, but every one who has had the opportunity of examining many feet, especially among the poorer class, must have met with many far worse. The two figured (Fig. 16), one (C) from a laboring workingman, the other (A and B) from a working-woman, both patients at a London



hospital, are very ordinary examples of the European artificial deformity of the foot, and afford a good comparison with the Chinese. It not unfrequently happens that the dislocation of the great toe is carried so far that it becomes placed almost at a right angle to the long axis of the foot, lying across the roots of the other toes.

The changes that a foot has to undergo in order to adapt itself to the ordinary shape of a shoe could probably not be effected unless commenced at an early period, when it is young and capable of being gradually molded into the required form. It seems perfectly marvelous that any one who had ever looked at a healthy pair of human feet could have thought of the possibility of wearing a stiff, unyielding shoe of identical form for both right and left, and yet the very trifling difference which is at present allowed is a comparatively modern innovation, and is even now too frequently disregarded, especially where most needed, as in the case of children.

The loss of elasticity and motion in the joints of the foot, as well as the wrong direction acquired by the great toe, are not mere theoretical evils, but are seriously detrimental to free and easy progression, and can only be compensated for in walking by a great expenditure of muscular power in other parts of the body, applied in a disadvantageous manner, and consequently productive of general