ous; but by far the most frequent, and one readily induced by the ordinary shoe, is weight improperly directed on the arch. If, for example, a shoe happens to be trodden on one side, and especially, as is most commonly the case, if it be so at the heel, then the heel has no support except from the inner margin of the sole, which is thus worn away, and the heel-piece becomes oblique, or, in other words, lower at one side than the other. In walking and standing on such a heel-piece, the whole external margin of the foot is raised, and the inner, which naturally supports the arch, is so depressed as gradually to lose its convexity; and thus flat-foot is induced.
Growing-in nails, unseemly protuberances at the base of the great toe (gout, chilblains), corns, bunions, and flat-foot, are thus the immediate consequences of that unsuitable form of the shoe in established use.
How the Shoemaker, with the best intentions, renders still worse the condition of the disfigured Foot.
When about to make a shoe for a foot already crippled, the shoemaker believes that he succeeds perfectly if he makes it exactly to fit the foot. This, however, is a gross fallacy; by so doing he renders the existing evils still greater.
A foot with its great toe lying obliquely is necessarily shorter than it would be with the toe in its proper posi-
