Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/667

Rh and the ball in front, and principally by the foot resting on the broad line formed by the great-toe and the breadth of the fore part of the foot."

The dotted lines in Fig. 3 show the outlines of a quite liberal sole. It is easy to see how an ordinary foot would be cramped if confined within its limits.

Fig. 4 shows a very common shape of the foot, produced by cramping and crowding the toes. Many persons have only to look at their own feet to see fine specimens of this sort.



The diseases most common to the feet are corns, bunyons, calluses, enlarged and stiffened joints, stiff and wasted toes, overlapping and underlapping toes, in-growing nails, caries of the bone, exostosis of the toe-bones, onyxitis of the toes, flat-foot, club-foot, ulcers, malignant and fibrous tumors, dislocations, changes in the shape of the bones from pressure, and elephantiasis. All wounds, injuries, and diseases are extremely liable to take on erysipelatous and scrofulous conditions, which speedily endanger life through their inflammatory, gangrenous, or debilitating nature; fatty degeneration of the tissues may take place, and weakness of the joints and thickening of the ankles plague their owners.

Corns consist of hardened flesh that becomes thorn-like in its shape and density, and a dismal source of pain. "A corn," says a writer, "is really a wicked demon, incarnated in a piece of callous skin. Its mission is to distress and agonize humanity and increase its wickedness." Gross says, "A bunyon is a corn on a large scale," and he and other writers agree that it is caused by a diversion of the great-toe from its line with the arch of the foot. When the toe is thus diverted, it forms an angle on the foot, which the shoe irritates and makes callous; inflammation sets in, and suppuration frequently ensues, that, in extreme cases, may make necessary amputation of the foot or feet.

Fig. 5 represents the foot of a young woman who wore high-heeled, narrow-soled shoes, which must also have been too short.

Figures 6 and 7 represent forms of bunyon complicated with under-and over-lapping toes.