APPLIED SCIENCE.
Walking is probably the least deliberated, the most taken- for-granted of all our physical functions. Yet we encase our feet in a more rigid substance of attire than we give to those less automatic servants the arms, and are the more cynically thoughtless of their well-being because this stern stuff of leather makes such an effective shield from visibility. Fashions in footwear are notoriously standardized, with a malignant tendency towards an ideal attenuation ; yet no two pairs of feet are structurally the same and expansion is the foot's most natural manifestation of healthiness. Most of us would more willingly develop the worst of diseases than go shod in elastic sand-shoes, and it would be easy enough to defend this mild degree of vanity as part of our stock of necessary human sensibilities. But who could put up a case for the irrelevant abominations of the five-inch heel and the strapped instep ? And who, from another standpoint, can honestly affirm that he cuts his toe-nails as discriminately as those on his hands ? The truth is, we shamefully neglect our feet ; we overwork them, house them cruelly, scant their respiratory apparatus, hide them from all inquiries. Ingratitude, as Shakespeare and the physiologists have warned us, is subtly self-destructive. Captain Sewell, realizing the danger, writes of his subject with enthusiasm, with respect, with an admirable over-tone of indignation. In place of the old costly surgical operations and the cumbrous, humiliating mechanical appliance, he puts forward an original system of enhanced physical culture. His diagnoses of the ailments of the foot are straightforward and thorough, his remedies are always explicit. The present reviewer, who suffers from puffy ankles, has been practising some of the prescribed exercises for a bare three days. Rejuvenation set in on the second ; to-day the results are almost terpsichorean.
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