CHAPTER XX 



THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS 



There are men in India who make a vow to keep their 

 hands shut tight for ten or even twenty years. Very 

 often they keep the vow, and of course the nails are 

 growing all the time. 



At first they grow into the flesh of the palm of the hand ; 

 then they go through it. Little by little they crowd be- 

 tween the bones until they make their way through them 

 too and come out on the back of the hand. When that has 

 come to pass, men cannot open their hands even if they 

 wish to ; in a strange way they are really nailed shut. 



You and I cannot imagine how such a man must suffer, 

 yet people who wear tight shoes may know a little about 

 it. Sometimes such shoes press the nails so hard that 

 they become " ingrowing nails," and these are very pain- 

 ful indeed. 



After certain kinds of illness the nails drop off and 

 new ones grow in their place ; after other diseases the 

 nail is rough and thick; and always, the older a man is, 

 the more brittle his nails get. 



No carpenter, mason, farmer, or writer could do good 

 work if he had a finger nail like a brittle claw on the end 



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