736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with people living under the artificial conditions and the accummulated 

 predisposition to disease which civilization entails, thus appear to suf- 

 fer little, if at all, from this unnatural treatment, it seems to be other- 

 wise with the French, on whom its effects have been watched by medi- 

 cal observers more closely than it can have been on the savages in 

 America. " Dr. Foville proves, by positive and numerous facts, that the 

 most constant and the most frequent effects of this deformation, though 

 only carried to a small degree, are headaches, deafnesses, cerebral con- 

 gestions, meningitis, cerebritis, and epilepsy ; that idiocy or madness 

 often terminates this series of evils, and that the asylums for lunatics 

 and imbeciles receive a large number of their inmates from among 

 these unhappy people." * For this cause the French physicians have 

 exerted all their influence, and with great success, to introduce a more 

 rational system in the districts where the practice of compressing the 

 heads of infants prevailed. 



I will now pass from the head to the extremities, and shall have 

 little to say about the hands, for the artificial deformities practiced 

 upon those members are confined to chopping off one or more of the 

 fingers, generally of the left hand, and usually not so much in obedience 

 merely to fashion, as part of an initiatory ceremony, or an expiation 

 or oblation to some superior, or to some departed person. Such prac- 

 tices are common among the American Indians, some tribes of Afri- 

 cans, the Australians, and Polynesians, especially those greatest of all 

 slaves of ceremonial, the Feejeeans, where the amputation of fingers is 

 demanded to appease an angry chieftain, or voluntarily performed on 

 the occasion of the death of a relative as a token of affection. 



On the other hand, the feet have suffered more, and altogether 

 with more serious results to general health and comfort from simple 

 conformity to pernicious customs, than any other part of the body. 

 But on this subject, instead of relating the unaccountable caprices of 

 the savage, we have to speak only of people who have already ad- 

 vanced to a tolerably high grade of civilization, and to include all 

 those who are at the present time foremost in the ranks of intellectual 

 culture. 



The most extreme instance of modification of the size and form of 

 the foot in obedience to fashion, is the well-known case of the Chinese 

 women, not entirely confined to the upper classes, but in some districts 

 pervading all grades of society alike. The deformity is produced by 

 applying tight bandages round the feet of the girls when about five 

 years old. The process is an extremely painful one, and its results are 

 not only an alteration in the relative position of the growing bones 

 and other structures, but an arrest of their development, so that they 

 remain permanently in a stunted or atrophied condition. The altera- 

 tions of form consist in two distinct processes: 1. Bending the four 



* Gosse, "Essai sur lcs Deformations artificiclle du Crane," " Annales d'Hygienc pub- 

 lique," 2 ser., tome iv., p. 8. 



