The Significance of the Proceeding.
The foregoing slender contribution to the comparative anatomy and physiology of bursæ is sufficient to show that at certain important and “critical” points in the mammalian anatomy, efficient bursæ are always present. One cannot indeed conceive the function of the parts involved being carried on at all without these ingenious contrivances, and no doubt can exist that in certain of the leading bursæ selection guides and guards, while use and habit maintain them. Over such as these “dominance” or the appearance of mutations might perhaps be supposed to preside, and possibly some useful statistical results might arise from their study from these points of view. But, between these major bursæ in man and lower Primates and the undifferentiated sacs which hardly deserve the name of bursæ, there is a perfect little host of insignificant structures, which at the first attempt at dominion over them on the part of Mendel or de Vries would hoist the standard of revolt. These would even refuse allegiance to Personal Selection under the persuasive banner, “Educability,” which however valuable elsewhere, must stand aside in this little province of Nature. I have thus attempted to “Lyell” this body of facts. Basing the statement on an analysis of a considerable mass of small facts which no one disputes I claim that the modifications drawn from normal anatomy on the one hand and on the other adventitious structures, produced by acknowledged mechanical forces, are examples of the transmission of modifications, and illustrate the mode of formation of certain initial variations. In other regions where Plasto-diēthēsis, as I conceive it, is at work in producing adapted organisms, there may be included in the hyphenated area certain factors of heredity, Mendelian, mutational and others, but not in this group. This is merely an assertion of an opinion though I submit that there is good evidence for it. Not even the hardest hearted Weismannian, Mendelian or mutationist, and not even the biometrician can refuse to this poor little province the required time and mechanical forces, and, unless an opponent can offer some explanation more consistent with the facts than that here offered, the proof of causation is as sound as that shown in the larger one of the direction of hair.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PLANTAR ARCH.
The principle of Lyell cannot be applied to this section of my subject for it is unique in the animal world. There is here a simple compilation of facts such as the medical schoolboy is supposed to know, and only requires for its setting forth the valuable expert knowledge of our predecessors in anatomy. It is indeed a pedestrian chapter.
Man alone possesses this mark of a high lineage, and it adds point to Shakespeare’s description of man as “paragon of animals,” and Huxley’s “a superb animal, head of the sentient world.” For winning this integral part of a perfect walking-foot man must stoop to conquer; he must descend from the trees in order that he may have life and liberty; whether he bears the ancient surname of Tarsius or the more honoured one of Pithecus matters not. Names had not in those early times usurped that tyranny over man’s mind which they have done among his modern descendants. He came into that terrestrial kingdom which was to be his own with many a limitation, but with the promise and potency of an unexampled evolution, when he assumed more fully the erect posture and saw that his inheritance was very good. Neither then nor since has he ever reached the fleetness of foot of the Thibetan wild ass, the astonishing sense of smell of the dog or horse, the keen sight of the hawk, or the climbing power of that simian family upon whom he turned his back as on a poor relation. He became par excellence the walking biped of earth, as, even with greater value to his mastery of the world he learned to talk in articulate language. A walking animal and a talking animal, with vast stretches of time for training these new powers of his, he became modified into the variegated human stocks, black, yellow and white, that now inhabit the earth.
A Crumbling Arch.
A digression, I hope, will be pardoned here before the value and beauty of the plantar arch and its mode of forging are described, and it is possible the latter may add some force to the former. Scientific (or, must I say?) semi-scientific writings are not concerned with the snobbishness of much of the pride of birth which still survives among us. But I would indeed think myself to be doing “my bit” if I could induce the present generation of young women and men to think highly of their plantar arches, nobler evidence of a “good” family than soft fair skin, taper fingers, Grecian nose, slender waist or that hair of which the decaying line of the long-haired kings of old France were too proud. For one reason or another, probably analogous to those for which he has lost so much the vigour of his hair of the scalp, or his dwindling wisdom-teeth and shrinking little toes, in other words, racial degeneration, modern man seems to be losing his plantar arch. For about three years I have made careful but saddening study of the ankles and feet of young women, and have embodied it in a variety of journals. This study has included about two thousand examples in young women of incipient or advanced flat-footedness as revealed, nay, flaunted before us in our towns and villages. This revelation has been offered by women’s shortened skirt, so that one can now note for oneself the ugly and disabling ankles and feet in the streets of any town, without the complicated business of a surgical examination. Such an examination, as it happens, and as it is usually undertaken, serves only to show a moderately advanced degree of this deformity, indeed, just so much as induces a patient to go to a doctor for relief of pain or obvious deformity. This is wholly insufficient for the study of a defect which in the various degrees of its development affects nearly 90 per cent. of all youngish women so far observed and noted. The doctors may—or may not—cure this evil, but they are not likely to find time even to discover during their strenuous lives, the great spread of this physical defect. But the merciful ukases of fashion, from Paris or elsewhere, and the obvious benefits, for once, of a fashion, are so powerful that the short skirt has remained with us for several years past and does not seem likely to go. I can only hope it will last until women who lead their sex in these days become ashamed of the feet of their sisters and their own, and make a forcible attack upon the Health Minister or Minister of Education, or both, so that systematic foot-drill in all elementary schools may be established. No other means than this, added to improved general health, can be conceived as able to correct so widely spread a deformity. I do not desire to be considered as making an attack on the bodily charms of women, for whose multifarious attractions I yield to none in sincere regard. But here is the revelation, here are the cases walking unashamed before us, and if the skirts should lengthen again and cruelly hide up the evil, no one will be induced again to take up the unpopular attitude of saying that nearly all young women have feet that are deformed and ugly and, therefore, more or less inefficient. There is, alas! only too much reason to know that the evil is great among the better class, even of boys, for in 1919 Captain Coote said publicly at a Schoolmasters’ Conference that fully 30 per cent. of the new boys entering leading public schools had flat-foot, and Captain Coote, the highest exponent of physical training in the Navy, knows a flat-foot when he sees it. The measures here suggested in connection with the feet of women have the great merit that from them boys and girls will alike benefit.