THE PLANTAR ARCH 193 



with the snobbishness of much of the pride of birth which still 

 survives among us. But I would indeed think myself to be doing 

 " my bit " if I could induce the present generation of young women 

 and men to think nighty of their plantar arches, nobler evidence of a 

 " good " family than soft fair skin, taper fingers, Grecian nose, 

 slender waist or that hair of which the decaying line of the long- 

 haired kings of old France were too proud. For one reason or 

 another, probably analogous to those for which he has lost so 

 much the vigour of his hair of the scalp, or his dwindling wisdom- 

 teeth and shrinking little toes, in other words, racial degeneration, 

 modern man seems to be losing his plantar arch. For about three 

 years I have made careful but saddening study of the ankles and 

 feet of young women, and have embodied it in a variety of journals. 

 This study has included about two thousand examples in young 

 women of incipient or advanced flat-footedness as revealed, nay, 

 flaunted before us in our towns and villages. This revelation has 

 been offered by women's shortened skirt, so that one can no"w note 

 for oneself the ugly and disabling ankles and feet in the streets of 

 any town, without the complicated business of a surgical examina- 

 tion. Such an examination, as it happens, and as it is usually 

 undertaken, serves only to show a moderately advanced degree of 

 this deformity, indeed, just so much as induces a patient to go to a 

 doctor for relief of pain or obvious deformity. This is wholly 

 insufficient for the study of a defect which in the various degrees 

 of its development affects nearly 90 per cent, of all youngish women 

 so far observed and noted. The doctors may — or may not — cure 

 this evil, but they are not likely to find time even to discover during 

 their strenuous lives, the great spread of this physical defect. But 

 the merciful ukases of fashion, from Paris or elsewhere, and the 

 obvious benefits, for once, of a fashion, are so powerful that the 

 short skirt has remained with us for several years past and does 

 not seem likely to go. I can only hope it will last until women 

 who lead their sex in these days become ashamed of the feet of their 

 sisters and their own, and make a forcible attack upon the Health 

 Minister or Minister of Education, or both, so that systematic 

 foot-drill in all elementary schools may be established. No other 

 means than this, added to improved general health, can be conceived 

 as able to correct so -widely spread a deformity. I do not desire 

 to be considered as making an attack on the bodily charms of 

 women, for whose multifarious attractions I yield to none in sincere 

 regard. But here is the revelation, here are the cases walking 

 unashamed before us, and if the skirts should lengthen again and 

 cruelly hide up the evil, no one will be induced again to take up the 



