Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children

by Pye Henry Chavasse

382. What is the best remedy for a Corn?

The best remedy for a hard corn is to remove it. The usual method of cutting, or of paring a corn away, is erroneous. The following is the right way—Cut with a sharp pair of pointed scissors around the circumference of the corn. Work gradually round and round and towards the centre. When you have for some considerable distance well loosened the edges, you can either with your fingers or with a pair of forceps generally remove the corn bodily, and that without pain and without the loss of any blood: this plan of treating a corn I can recommend to you as being most effectual.

If the corn be properly and wholly removed it will leave a small cavity or round hole in the centre, where the blood-vessels and the nerve of the corn—vulgarly called the root—really were, and which, in point of fact, constituted the very existence or the essence of the corn. Moreover, if the corn be entirely removed, you will, without giving yourself the slightest pain, be able to squeeze the part affected between your finger and thumb.

Hard corns on the sole of the foot and on the sides of the foot are best treated by filing—by filing them with a sharp cutting file (flat on one side and convex on the other) neither too coarse nor too fine in the cutting. The corn ought, once every day, to be filed, and should daily be continued until you experience a slight pain, which tells you that the end of the corn is approaching. Many cases of hard corn that have resisted every other plan of treatment, have been entirely cured by means of the file. One great advantage of the file is, it cannot possibly do any harm, and may be used by a timid person—by one who would not readily submit to any cutting instrument being applied to the corn.

The file, if properly used, is an effectual remedy for a hard corn on the sole of the foot. I myself have seen the value of it in several cases, particularly in one case, that of an old gentleman of ninety five, who had had a corn on the sole of his foot for upwards of half a century, and which had resisted numerous, indeed almost innumerable remedies, at length I recommended the file, and after a few applications entire relief was obtained, and the corn was completely eradicated.

The corns between the toes are called soft corns. A soft corn is quickly removed by the strong Acetic Acid—Acid. Acetic Fort—which ought to be applied to the corn every night by means of a camel's hair brush. The toes should be kept asunder for a few minutes, in order that the acid may soak in, then apply between the toes a small piece of cotton wool.

Galbanum Plaster spread either on wash leather, or on what is better, on an old white kid glove, has been, in one of our medical journals, strongly recommended as a corn plaster, it certainly is an admirable one, and when the corn is between the toes is sometimes most comfortable—affording immense relief.

Corns are like the little worries of life—very teazing and troublesome a good remedy for a corn—which the Galbanum Plaster undoubtedly is-is therefore worth knowing.

Hard corns, then, on the sole and on the side of the foot are best treated by the file, hard corns on the toes by the scissors, and soft corns between the toes either by the strong Acetic Acid or by the Galbanum Plaster.

In the generality of cases the plans recommended above, if properly performed, will effect a cure, but if the corn, from pressure or from any other cause, should return, remove it again, and proceed as before directed. If the corn have been caused either by tight or by ill fitting shoes, the only way to prevent a recurrence is, of course, to have the shoes, properly made by a clever shoemaker—by one who thoroughly understands his business, and who will have a pair of lasts made purposely for the feet. [Footnote: As long as fashion instead of common sense is followed in the making of both boots and shoes, men and women will, as a matter of course, suffer from corns.