622 
ON THE EXPANSION BAR SHOE. 
wall of the foot, the more likely are we to succeed in what we 
want. 
I believe that, with the majority of practitioners in our art, it is 
customary to apply bar shoes for weak heels, diseased heels, and 
to improve contracted feet, 8tc.; and for these various purposes I 
have found them answer very well; but still I thought there was 
something wanting in the shape of an improvement; and often 
has the idea of inventing a real expansion bar shoe occurred to 
me, which I think I have, at last, in a manner perfected, and 
which is formed as follows :— 
Make a common open bar shoe unwelded; cut it through at 
the toe, which has to be jointed with a plain over-lap or joint, 
generally used in hunting shoes; this joint is more difficult to 
make than the former, but is by far the neatest. You must now 
proceed to get up an elastic agent at the heels to regulate the 
motion of the joint at the toe , and to take the lateral pressure 
off the crust; which can be done by putting a piece of spring 
steel on, with two rivets on each side, of an arched form, thus, 
m u the convex part of which to embrace the lower 
surface of the frog and the inner surface of the commissures ; or, 
in plainer language, the frog surface of the bars, which will 
act as two clips or stays in steadying the shoe in its action, 
and taking the lateral pressure off the necks of the heel nails. 
A small portion at the posterior part should be grooved out, in 
order to make the spring fit flush with the surface of the shoe. In 
cases where you cannot get an artist capable of making this shoe 
on the plan stated, it may be a little simplified by putting a piece 
of black leather in the situation of the steel, which can be fixed in 
the same form. 
The expansion of this shoe, or its operation, is seen remark¬ 
ably well by nailing a piece of Indian rubber on the posterior part 
of the shoe ; when you lay it on a plain surface, and then press 
the weight of your body on it, you will perceive the two sides 
recede from each other. 
I do not pretend to say that this shoe will answer every kind of 
foot, nor do I wish it. “ The sick require a physician; those who 
are in good health require none.” What I mean to infer from this 
is, that I only recommend this shoe to be applied to such feet as 
have lost all power of expansion in themselves, where the frogs 
are squeezed to death, and partly absorbed, from the compression 
of the sides of the heels. The expansion bar-shoe will be found 
a good agent in such feet, in bringing back their original tone. 
We know for a fact, that if the action of any organ in the human 
body be long in a state or rest, it becomes weak, and ulti¬ 
mately useless. Now the same with the foot after having been 
