Healing is rapid and with the use of properly shaped, and roomy foot-gear, recurrence should not take place.
It is evident from the nature of helomata, that any “cure,” rubbed or painted upon the affected surface, can only cause the softening of a certain thickness of skin, and that no hope for cure is justified unless the careful and complete removal of the growth is accomplished and followed by the use of roomy foot-gear.
Radical Cure. The total excision of corns, while disabling the patient more or less for a few days, is in many instances justifiable. There is little probability of recurrence if proper foot-gear is worn, and the results are especially good if the skin graft operation as devised by Dr. Robert T. Morris is employed, which is described in the next paragraph.
After the excision of the growth, a small piece of skin is removed from the leg and sewn to the denuded area. This prevents a tough cicatrix forming and assures a normal skin covering to the area previously occupied by the corn.
The Text Book of Practical Chiropody, now in course of preparation, will contain lengthy and explicit articles on the subjects of verruca and heloma. The purpose here has been largely to present the subject from a broad surgical viewpoint. The strictly chiropodial features will be thoroughly outline in the Text Book of Practical Chiropody after a manner never before attempted and will include all details of the chisel methods, the dissecting methods and the shaving operations.
DISEASES OF THE NAILS
INGROWN NAIL
Although chronic inflammatory affections of the neighboring skin often produce changes in the form, color and thickness of the nails, these so rarely call for surgical interference that only those conditions leading up to the development of ingrown nail will receive consideration in the following.
Ingrown nail may be due to either a lateral hypertrophy of the nail itself cutting into the soft parts, or to the primary hypertrophy of the soft parts themselves, thus producing the same picture. An accurate determination of which condition represents the original etiologic element is important in deciding upon a course of treatment directed to the radical cure of ingrown nail.