Causes of Deformed Feet.
The tight shoe or boot, too narrowly toed, is exclusively responsible for that painful affection, ingrowth of the toe-nail. If treated in time, it can be easily and simply cured. All that is necessary is to scrape down the nail until it becomes quite thin, and then cut the projecting edge of it in a semilunar form, with its concavity looking outward from the foot. The nail of the great toe should always be thus pared, care being taken not to clip the angles. This causes it to grow toward the centre, and shrink from the tender flesh at the sides. Chloroform now happily fulfills the service for the rendering of which this awkward process was barely a pretext. Though the operation has thus become painless to the insensible patient, it has lost none of its horror to the spectator. The surgeon, grasping the toe, thrusts the sharp-pointed blade of a pair of scissors under the nail as far as it will go, and then, cutting it in two, tears out each half with a pair of pincers from the quivering flesh in which it has been long imbedded. No one, not even the slave of fashion, should submit to any form of the boot or shoe other than the broad-toed, which is fortunately now in vogue.
The foot, like the hand, is subject to the infirmity of excessive perspiration. It is to be remedied by the same general and local treatment. The habitual daily washing of the feet should be with cold rather than with warm water, and a powder of starch or arrowroot, which it would be well to perfume with bitter almonds, orris, or some other no more intrusive odor, should be sprinkled in the inside of the stocking.