'WHY THE SHOE PINCHES. * IT is a curious and melancholy
fact in the history of civilization that, among the things which are worst done under the sun are many of those which all mankind have been doing since the be- ginning of the world to the present day. Towns, and cities, and isolated dwellings are still built under conditions that insure the poisoning of the soil, the air, and the waters. Their inhabitants continue to their own incalculable injury, to break the natural circle of decomposition and reproduction, because they have not the wit to profit by the maxim that dirt is only matter in a wrong place. We very much doubt if there are half-a-dozen cooks in England who know how to boil a leg of mutton. It is often said that all women are born nurses, but Miss Nightingale believes, an the contrary, "that the very elements of nursing are all but un- known." We might fill a volume with instances illustrative of our theme, but we could hardly adduce a more palpable example of misdirected art than than that which is made the subject of the excellent little treatise before us. Everyone knows something' by exPenence of the tortures inflicted by ill-shaped shoes; but the fact will be new to most people, and not the less true for all its 'levelly, that boots and shoes are almost invariably ill-shaped, and that besides the crippling deformities more immediately attri- butable to them they cause indirectly many; injuries to health which are commonly imputed to any cause but the true one. The revelation of this fact made by Professor Meyer may be confidently accepted by the unlearned as authentic, for AS author enjoys a very high reputation among the votaries of his favourite science. Professor Goodsir speaks or him as having "largely con- tributed to that recent rapid advance of anatomy and physiology which is due to the more direct and refined methods of investiga- tion. By his researches, more particularly into the structure and actions of the lower limbs, he has given to our conceptions in this department of the science a precision which could only have been attained by the physico-mathematical method of investiga- tion which he employed. The value of his results can only be properly estimated by the anatomist and physiologist ; but his practical application of certain of them in the work which you" [the translator of this treatise] "have rendered so successfully in English, cannot fail to be fully appreciated by the general reader." Professor Meyer builds up his argument on this fundamental principle, that the shape of the shoe ought not to be left to the dictates of fashion, for that would be in fact giving to fashion the right of determining the shape of the foot, it being quite clear that if the shoe differ in shape from the foot, the latter, being the more pliable, must, of necessity, adapt itself to the shape of the former. Having laid down this canon, he proceeds to demonstrate • Why the Shoe Pinches, a Contribution to Applied Anatomy,. It_y Hermann Meyer, M.D. Translated from the German by John Stirling Craig, L .E.C.P.E., Published byEdmonston and'Doughts, Edinburgh. the normal shape of the foot, and to compare the outline of its sole with that of shoes made in the ordinary way,. The chief points established in this part of the treatise are, that the great toe plays by far the most important part in walking ; that in raising the foot, in the act of stepping, the whole of the sole is gradually unrolled as it were up to the point of the great toe ; and that the line in which the foot thus unrolls itself passes through the centre of the heel, and is, in a perfectly sound foot, continuous with the axis of the great toe. In such a foot also the toes lie in an almost rectangular triangle, whilst one of the com- monest distortions caused by shoes and boots of the usual form is the conversion of the rectangular into an isosceles acute angled triangle. Growing-in nails, gout, chilblains, corns, bunions, and flat foot are among the other evils immediately springing from the same cause. It is a prevailing belief among shoemakers that there are primary differences in the structure of feet ; but this is an error. "All feet are perfectly alike in the principles of their mechanical construction, and the only differences in our healthy feet are those arising from varying length and breadth." Feet which have been much deformed by ill-made shoes will require special management, and our author lays down rules for the shoe- maker's guidance in such eases. The principles upon which a tolerably well-preserved foot is to be fitted are as follows. Though we cannot transfer the author's diagram to our columns, we retain his symbolic letters, as these may afford the reader some help in constructing the figure for himself— "The main point to be attended to is, that the great toe shall have its normal position, so that those functions which are proper to it may be called into play in walking. It must, therefore, as has already been pointed out, lie in such a position as that its axis, when carried backwards, shall pass through the centre of the heel. In a straight line, therefore, in which the centre of the heel and the axis of the great toe are included, we have the primary line necessary to designing the entire sole, and a proper sole may now be formed in the following manner :—The length of the foot from the back of the heel to the point of the great toe is laid down in a straight line, a b. The half of the breadth of the heel c d, should then be marked off on this line, and the centre of the heel is thus ascertained. The length from the point to the great toe to the point where the hollow of the foot commences, that is to say, to the posterior margin of the ball of the great toe (ef), about two-fifths of the whole length of the foot, is now to be mea- sured and marked off in its proper place on the primary straight line, and
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thus the broadest part of the foot s found. At this place a line should be drawn cutting the longitudinal straight line at right angles, and on this transverse line the greatest breadth of the foot is to be marked, so that just so much of the foot lies on one side of the long line as corresponds to half the breadth of the great toe (f g), the rest of the whole breadth of foot fall- ing on the other side (f h.) The longitudinal line is now carried a little farther forward, and then "arallel to it the inner margin (g 1) of the an- terior sole is to be drawn, and for this purpose we begin at the inner termi- nation of the transverse line which indicates the greatest breadth of the foot.
"All the points essential to the construction of a proper sole have thus been obtained, namely, the inner margin of the anterior sole, the posterior boundary of the heel, and the greatest projection of the little toe. Around these points a sole may readily be constructed, as may be seen from the an- nexed drawing, in which the outlines of the sole are filled up with dotted lines. To a shoemaker of good taste, it will not be at all difficult to infuse into the design a certain amount of elegance To recapitulate what we have already said: A sole is of the proper construction when a line, drawn at half the breadth of the great toe distant from, and parallel to, the iimer margin of that toe, shall, when carried backwards, pass through the centre of the heel. In the usual form of a Sole this line passes out of the inner margin of the heel. If, then, the preservation id the primary straight line is, as has been already shown, the principal point in the formation of a proper sole, it follows, that if it be thought desirable to have pointed shoes, the pointing must be effected from the other side. In a pair of shoes made on these principles, placed side by side with the heels in contact, the inner margins of the frontpart of the foot are also brought close together."
We earnestly advise our readers not to content themselves with our brief abstract of Professor Meyer's treatise, but to study line by line lessons which so nearly concern the comfort and health of every man, woman, and child, who steps in shoe-leather. Espe- cially we commend them to our Volunteers, who may choose their own foot gear in accordance with the duties of science and com- mon sense, without waiting until a ray of either shall by some miracle find its way into the Horse Guards. They know the maxim that in modern warfare battles are won more by legs than by arms, and army surgeons can tell them that in our infantry regiments "numbers of men are continually breaking down on the feet when on long marches."
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