1880.] 



on Fashion in Deformity. 



407 



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 outwards, pressing so ujion the others that one or 

 more of them frequently has to find room for itself either above or 

 under its fellows ; the joints all rigi<l, the muscles atrophied and 

 powerless ; the finely formed arcli broken down ; everything which is 

 beautiful and excellent in the human foot destroyed, to s.iy nothing 

 of the more serious evils which so generally follow — corns, bunions, 

 in-growing nails, and all their attendant miseries. 



Now, the cause of all this will be perfectly obvious to anyone who 

 compares the form of the natural foot with the last upon which the 

 shoemaker makes the covering for that foot. This, in the words of 



A. Natural form of the sole of the Foot, the great toe parallel to the axis of the 

 •whole foot. B. The same, with outline of ordinary fashionable boot. C. The neces- 

 sary modification of the form of the foot consequent upon wearing such a boot. 



the late Mr. Dowie, " is shaped in front like a wedge, the thick part 

 or instep rising in a ridge from the centre or middle toe, instead of 

 the great toe, as in the foot, slanting off to both sides from the middle, 

 terminating at each side and in front like a wedge ; that for the inside 

 or great toe being similar to that for the outside or little toe, as if the 

 human foot had the great toe in the middle and a little toe at each 

 side, like the foot of a goose ! " The great error in all boots and 

 shoes made upon the system now in vogue in all parts of the civilized 

 world lies in this method of construction upon a principle of bilateral 

 symmetry. A straight line drawn along the sole from the middle of 



