CHAPTER V.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN FEET, ETC.

“There is nothing more beautiful than the structure of the human foot,” says Sir Charles Bell; “nor perhaps any demonstration which would lead a well-educated person to desire to know more of anatomy than that of the foot. The foot has in its structure all the fine appliances you see in a building. In the first place, there is an arch, in whatever way you regard the foot; looking down upon it, we perceive several bones coming round the astralagos, and forming an entire circle of surfaces in the contact. If we look at the profile of the foot, an arch is still manifest, of which the posterior part is formed by the heel, and the anterior by the ball of the great toe; and in the front, we find in that direction a transverse arch: so that, instead of standing, as might be imagined, on a solid bone, we stand upon an arch composed of a series of bones, which are united by the most curious provision for the elasticity of the foot; hence, if we jump from height directly upon the heel, a severe shock is felt; not so, if we alight upon the ball of the great toe, for there an elasticity is formed in the whole foot, and the weight of the body is thrown upon this arch, and the shock avoided.”

Another writer, on the “diseases of the feet,” thus alludes to the beauty and perfection of the human foot in its natural state:--

“The matchless forms of sculptured beauty which the destroying hand of time has left us in the works of the mighty masters of the classic time, exhibit to us the finest specimens of what the foot would be, if allowed its free and uninterrupted action.

“We are immediately struck with the admirable manner in which it is organized, both for the support of the frame and for motion; its flexibility, its power of action, its form, seem all to have been the result of the examination of the most perfect human models. We see that there have been no artificial coverings, no compression, no restraints; that the gait must have been free, firm, and elastic; that the natural and healthful action of every muscle, tendon, joint, and bone, was fully studied and expressed. There is no stiffness, no contraction of the heel or the sole of the foot; to the toes are given their proper functions; we see that only the sandal has been worn, merely to cover and protect the integument under the broad and expanded foot, there have been no ligatures, no unyielding bandages, no cramping compresses--all is alike free, healthful, natural.

“We well can comprehend, on examining them, how the Macedonian phalanx or the Roman legion, performed its long day’s march. We can see how ten thousand Greeks pursued their daily wearying course through the destroying climate of Asia, marching firmly, manfully, alike across the arid sand, the mountain pass, or the flinty plain.

“We are almost led to the wish to see the European soldier similarly prepared for his toilsome march, unencumbered by the unyielding shoe, which sometimes becomes in the day a source of greater annoyance than of comfort to him. He would be enabled to undertake fatigue and privations for which he is now totally unprepared. He would find an elastic tread, a firm command over his muscular system, follow upon such a plan. He would be capable of making a charge upon the enemy with greater steadiness, and enabled to bear the shock which he is now less capable of resisting. In this respect we should do well to imitate the native soldier of India, who, under the English banner, has followed a Clive, a Hastings, or a Keane, when the British soldier has almost sunk from the insuperable difficulties which attend wearing all parts of the dress he has been accustomed to do in England, forgetful of the climate in which he is placed.”

For upward of twenty years as a bootmaker, I have made the feet my study, and during that period many thousand pairs of feet have received my attention. I have observed with minute care the _cast_ from the antique as well as “the modern instances,” and I am obliged to admit, that much of the pain I have witnessed, much of the distortion of the toes, the corns on the top of the feet, the bunion on the side, the callosities beneath, and the growing-in of the nails between, are attributable to the shoemaker. The feet, with proper treatment, might be as free from disease and pain as the hands; their structure and adaptation to the wants and comfort of man, as we have seen, is most perfect. Thirty-six bones and thirty-six joints have been given by the Creator to form one of these members, and yet man cramps, cabins, and confines, his beautiful arrangements of one hundred and forty-four bones and joints, together with muscles, elastic cartilage, lubricating oily fluid, veins, and arteries, into a pair of shoes or boots, which, instead of protecting from injury, produces the most painful as well as permanent results. Many volumes have been written on the cause of corns, and it has been my lot to wade through many of them, without gaining much for my pains. I have therefore arrived at the conclusion, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, that corns are in all cases the result of pressure.

I am confirmed in this opinion by one of the most respectable chiropodists of the present day (Mr. Durlacher), a gentleman who has had a considerable experience in the treatment of corns and bunions. He says:--

“Pressure and friction are unquestionably the predisposing causes of corns, although, in some instances, they are erroneously supposed to be hereditary. Improperly-made shoes invariably produce pressure upon the integuments of the toes and prominent parts of the feet, to which is opposed a corresponding resistance from the bone immediately beneath, in consequence of which the vessels of the dermis are compressed between them, become injured, congested, and, after a time, hypertrophied.

“When corns are produced by friction and slight pressure, they are the result of the shoes being too large and the leather hard, so that, by the extension of the foot, the little toe, or any prominent part, is constantly being rubbed and compressed by its own action.

“This may continue on and off for months, or even years, before any inconvenience is experienced, but, progressively, the cuticle increases, and is either detached from the dermis by serum being poured out between them, similar to a common blister, and a new covering produced, or the epidermis thickens into layers adhering to each other.”

Chiropodists have been in the habit of classifying corns into--

1. Hard corns.

2. Soft corns.

3. Bleeding corns.

And these classes have been subdivided into many varieties, but it is enough, in a treatise on the feet and their covering, to allude to the cause of torment generally, as a hard substance and a soft one, pressing into the foot, as the Roman name emphatically describes it, “clavus dura”--a small tack.

The approach of a corn, as all who ever felt it know, commences with a slight inflammatory smart on the prominent part of the little toe; then comes on the excessive burning, the throbbing, the stabbing: “a little longer, yet a little longer;” and then the point of the tack begins to enter, the outer skin is penetrated, the next membrane becomes inflamed, and, from the delicate “network” of the rete mucosum, an increased quantity of secretion is poured out: gradually a substance is formed, hard, horny, and with a sharp point, that descends deeper and deeper into the foot, until not unfrequently it reaches and enters the blood-vessels and very joints themselves.

All attempts at cure must be directed to the point of the corn. It has been usual to salve and plaster and cut the head of this tack, generally with little or no success--call it a thorn in the foot, “spina pedum,” a name given to it by some practitioners; and how absurd this palliative treatment appears--every one knows that the thorn must immediately be extracted, and if we delay, great pain is the consequence, and soon nature expels it herself.

Some balsams and tinctures have been much spoken of by the older writers on the different excrescences, but modern practice has very judiciously excluded them, from their insufficiency to produce any good effect. The radical cure is more dependent upon surgical than medical means.

“Although I have devoted,” says Mr. Durlacher, “nearly thirty years practical experience to the investigation, and have tried various chymical and other remedial agents, yet I have never been able to discover any certain cure for corns. Nevertheless, men are found bold enough in their ignorance and presumption, to assert, by public advertisement, that they possess an infallible nostrum, capable of thoroughly eradicating corns; and others who pretend to extract them, seek to aid their trickery and charlatanry by exhibiting small spiculæ as the roots of the corns they have extracted, although it is a positive fact from the structure of the skin, that such an assertion must be false, and the whole proceeding the veriest imposition imaginable.”

The reader must, by this time have arrived at the conclusion, that the whole mischief is to be laid upon the covering of the feet, and not on the feet themselves. In some instances it may be admitted that the feet are peculiarly exposed to injury from the delicacy of the skin; some persons are constitutionally predisposed to corns, the slightest friction or pressure being sufficient to cause irritation, or, as in some cases, to develop a corn that has sometime been lying dormant. The illustrations given in former chapters of fashions, will sufficiently prove the cause of distortion of the feet; and the result of this infliction of pain for the sake of fashion, has been a plentiful harvest of corns.

Every one who has corns knows and feels that pressure is the cause; “no one knows better where the shoe pinches, than he who wears it.” Yet few persons know why it hurts, or are aware how the remedy should be applied.

Sometimes a shoe is too large, often too small, very often too short, but generally the wrong shape altogether. The fault is not so much in the shoes themselves, as in the lasts from which they are made; there the cause is to be found, and there it has been my study for many years to apply the remedy.

The best materials may have been used for sole and upper leather; the most exquisite closing and stabbing been put in till the work “looked like print;” the workmanship may have been “firstrate,” but deficient in the primary and most essential part--the suitable form of the last on which the article was to be moulded. The boot or shoe would not be a suitable or comfortable covering for the foot, and the unfortunate wearer again finds that he has put his feet into the “shoemaker’s stocks.”

Every one who wishes to be comfortably fitted, should have a pair of lasts made expressly for his own use; experience has taught me, and doubtless many other masters who have had much to do with bespoke work for tender or peculiar feet, that no plan is equal to this to secure a good fit and save inconvenience and disappointment for the future.

The length and the width are now every-day affairs, but the judgment of fitting is another thing, and here is the true skill.

A last fitted up to the length and width may do or it may not; it may do by chance, or fail of necessity; but if fitting be anything, it is a skilful adaptation of the last to the true form and requirements of the foot generally.

The outlines, 1, 2, 3, will show the direction and bearing of three different feet, neither of which would be comfortably fitted, if the length and width were the only points attended to. For No. 1 we require a straight-formed last, with an equal proportion of wood on each side the centre line. No. 2 requires considerable fulness of the inside joint, to allow for a bunion; the great toe requires a bed for the ball to rest in; the waist must be very hollow, else the quarter will bag; while No. 3 requires a wide flat tread and great thickness of wood, for the toes which are covered with corns.

Many persons have an idea that right and left shoes are a comparatively modern invention, but the illusions and illustrations to the contrary, in pages 39-44 disprove this; straight lasts are decidedly a modern invention, and notwithstanding what many persons say to the contrary, are decidedly inferior to a well-formed right and left pair.

The great evil has been that all right and left lasts, of late have been _crooked_. It was thought in abandoning the straight last with its faults, that a perfect fit could be secured in rights and lefts; and from one extreme, as is generally the case in fashion, the opposite was adopted, and a twisted right and left made the matter still worse.

It was thought nothing could be right and left but that which took a decided turn, and the consequence has been that for years lasts have been made with an ugly twist inward, where no wood was required, and on the outside, where the toes with all their tenderness and liability to injury have required thickness and breadth, nothing has been left.

I have pointed out this fault to last-makers a thousand times--have stood by them at their work, and have seen the part--where, of all things, I wished the room to be left--cruelly sliced off, or rasped away: the consequence to the unfortunate wearer of a shoe or boot made on that last must have been, months of torture.

Some workmen, however, have at last seen the error they have all along been committing, and adopted the improved form, wondering how it was never thought of before.

No. 1 represents a sketch of the foot and the sole usually formed to fit it. No. 2 is a well-formed sole, straight, suitable, and far more elegant.

The _straight_ last has often been a better right and left for certain feet, than the _pair_ made for them, the room having been given at the part most wanted, which was the chief thing: and although the hollow of the foot was not at all fitted, and the quarter gaped outside, yet it was easy. On the other hand the right and left was deficient on the outside, and having nothing for the second, third, and little toe, they were cramped together, and the consequences were immediate pain, a hard corn on the joints of the little toe and a soft one between the others.

All this may be avoided. The form of the feet should be taken in outline on a sheet of paper, and the prominent toes noted down at the time, and immediately after a pair of lasts made suitable in every way.

But instead of this, hundreds of shoemakers in the country have been making all their lifetime, from some old misshapen pieces of wood, that perhaps had done service to their fathers and grandfathers, and been patched and altered to suit the wants of a whole parish. Even in town, where we have last-makers at our elbow, we have been far from doing what we ought in this matter. Instead of fitting the foot to the shoe, the business of the tradesman certainly is to shape his last so correctly that the shoe should fit the foot.

Petrarch is said to have nearly lamed himself from the attempts he made, and the pinching he underwent, to display to his Laura a neat foot. Cases of this kind are frequently met with every day, where every sacrifice is made for this end, and pinching all over the foot may be tolerated, and no bad consequences ensue for a time; but the pinching at one place is the point which ought immediately to be “reformed altogether.”

It is extremely amusing to witness, on the other side, the care some old gentlemen take to get their shoes made easy; while the Petrarch of the present day, orders his boots to be _smart_, and threatens his bootmaker that if he can get into them, he “won’t have ’em,” the old gentleman of experience and wisdom comes with two pairs of thick lamb’s wool stockings on, which his friend who accompanies him waggishly says, are--

“His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank;”

he looks knowingly in return and whispers, that he put on two pairs of the thickest stockings he had, on purpose to deceive the shoemaker.

In the early English translation of “Lazarillo de Tormes,” is this passage: “If you bid a shoemaker who has been thirty years at his trade make a new pair of shoes with broad toes, high in the instep, and tight about the heel, he must pare your feet before he pleases you”--a sly, but sarcastic allusion to the imperfect fitting of the shoemaker, and an admission of the pride of the wearer.

Ladies and gentlemen, and even children, should have their own lasts, and be sure they are carefully and correctly made to the feet.

It would, however, be expecting too much that for a single pair of shoes or boots, a shoemaker or bootmaker should make for his customer a pair of lasts, free of charge; as prices are now, he would be a considerable loser--the customer might never favor him with another order, he seeks a cheaper shop--goes abroad or dies. The lasts on which a skilful workman has been employed for perhaps a whole day, and which cost at least four or five shillings, are left on his hands perfectly useless.

For my own personal comfort I would weigh my own lasts which have been carefully made, in a scale against their weight in silver, and consider them cheap; numbers of our nobility and gentry, in effect, do the same, and to a much greater amount, for their personal comfort, in matters of the teeth, eyes, chest, hair, hands, and ears. Then why not a little sacrifice, a little more liberality, to those important members--the feet.

No such remuneration, however, as I have hinted at would be expected; five or six shillings generally would remunerate the maker of a pair of lasts, and the better the fit the greater satisfaction to all.

We have now seen the fashions from the earliest period; many of the shoes from their form and material must have been comfortable; the broad shoe of Henry VIII., wood engraving p. 46, was one of that class, and the slashed specimens in p. 47 sufficiently show where the shoe pinched in 1577, and how relief was sought and obtained: even the very worst of all the fashions might have been made comparatively comfortable had due attention been paid to the form of the lasts.

The poet Gay gives a caution on this matter, and if the value I attach to my lasts be their weight in silver, I am free to confess Gay’s lines are worth their weight in _gold_.

“Let firm well-hammered soles protect thy feet, Through freezing snows and rains and soaking sleet. Should the big last extend the shoe too wide, Each stone will wrench the unwary step aside; The sudden turn may stretch the swelling vein, The cracking joint unhinge, or ankle sprain; And, when too short the modest shoes are worn, You’ll judge the seasons by your shooting corn.”