Page:Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (ser 03 vol 05).djvu/185

 FOOT-BINDING IN CHINA.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROCESS AND ITS EFFECTS; AND A COR RECTION OF MANY ERRONEOUS STATEMENTS WHICH HAVE BEEN MADE, CHIEFLY BY TRAVELLERS, IN REGARD TO IT.

By

ROBERT P. HARRIS, A.M., iM.D. [Read December 3, 1879.]

Critically* examined in all their various pecu- liarities, it may well be said that the Chinese arc the most singular people upon the face of our globe : a composite nation, consisting mainly of two Mongolian races, the Manchu Tartars, or reigning power, and the Chinese proper, who have been conquered and subjected by them. To the former, belongs the cus- tom of wearing the queue; and to the latter, that most singular, pernicious and unaccountable one, of binding the feet. The queue, although the evidence of subjugation, and originally forced upon the Chinese, has been adopted by them from taste, and is now* uni- versally worn. The foot-binding has never been ac- cepted as a fashion by the Tartars, who allow the member to grow as nature intended it should.

The custom or fashion of dwarfing the feet of Chi- nese women by the use of a bandage first applied in childhood, is of so ancient an origin, that nothing re- liable can be learned as to the date of its introduction,

or the reason why it was ever commenced or founded. 1