Chinese women, not entirely confined to the highest classes, but in some
districts pervading all grades of society alike. The deformity is
produced by applying tight bandages round the feet of the girls when
about five years old. The bandages are specially manufactured, Miss
Norwood[78] tells us, and are about two inches wide and two yards long
for the first year, five yards long for subsequent years. The end of the
strip is laid on the inside of the foot at the instep, then carried over
the toes, under the foot, and round the heel, the toes being thus drawn
towards and across the sole, while a bulge is produced in the instep,
and a deep indentation in the sole. Successive layers of bandage are
wound round the foot until the strip is all used, and the end is then
sewn tightly down. After a month the foot is put in hot water to soak
some time; then the bandage is carefully unwound. Notwithstanding the
powdered alum and other appliances that are used to prevent it, the
surface of the foot is generally found to be ulcerated, and much of the
skin and sometimes part of the flesh of the sole, and even one or two of
the toes, may come off with the bandages, in which case the woman
afterwards feels repaid by the smallness and more delicate appearance of
her feet. Each time the bandage is taken off, the foot is kneaded to
make the joints more flexible, and is then bound up again as quickly as
possible with a fresh bandage, which is drawn up more tightly. During
the first year the pain is so intense that the sufferer can do nothing
but lie and cry and moan. For about two years the foot aches
continually, and is subject to a constant pain like the pricking of
sharp needles. With continued rigorous binding it ultimately loses its
sensibility, the muscles, nerves, and vessels are all wasted, the bones
are altered in their relative position to one another, and the whole
limb is reduced permanently to a stunted or atrophied condition.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Chinese woman’s foot, from the inside. A
photograph by Dr. R. A. Jamieson.[79]]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Sole of Chinese woman’s foot]
The alterations produced in the form of the foot are--1. Bending the
four outer toes under the sole of the foot, so that the first or great
toe alone retains its normal position, and a narrow point is produced in
front; 2. Compressing the roots of the toes and the heel downwards and
towards one another so as greatly to shorten the foot, and produce a
deep transverse fold in the middle of the sole (Fig. 28). The whole has
now the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot,
and affords a very inefficient organ of support, as the peculiar
tottering gait of those possessing it clearly shows. When once formed,
the “golden lily,” as the Chinese lady calls her delicate little foot,
can never recover its original shape.
But strange as this custom seems to us, it is only a slight step in
excess of what the majority of people in Europe subject themselves and
their children to. From personal observation of a large number of feet
of persons of all ages and of all classes of society in our own country,
I do not hesitate to say that there are very few, if any, to be met with
that do not, in some degree, bear evidence of having been subjected to a
compressing influence more or less injurious. Let any one take the
trouble to inquire into what a foot ought to be. For external form look
at any of the antique models,--the nude Hercules Farnese or the
sandalled Apollo Belvidere; watch the beautiful freedom of motion in the
wide-spreading toes of an infant; consider the wonderful mechanical
contrivances for combining strength with mobility, firmness with
flexibility; the numerous bones, articulations, ligaments; the great
toe, with seven special muscles to give it that versatility of motion
which was intended that it should possess;--and then see what a
miserable, stiffened, distorted thing is this same foot when it has been
submitted for a number of years to the “improving” process to which our
civilisation condemns it. The toes all squeezed and flattened against
each other; the great toe no longer in its normal position, but turned
outwards, pressing so upon the others that one or more of them
frequently has to find room for itself either above or under its
fellows; the joints all rigid, the muscles atrophied and powerless; the
finely-formed arch broken down; everything which is beautiful and
excellent in the human foot destroyed,--to say nothing of the more
serious evils which so generally follow--corns, bunions, ingrowing
nails, and all their attendant miseries.
[Illustration:
FIG. 29.--A. Natural form of the sole of the foot, the great toe
parallel to the axis of the whole foot. B. The same, with outline
of ordinary fashionable boot. C. The modification of the form of
the foot, necessarily produced by wearing such a boot.
]
Now, the cause of this will be perfectly obvious to any one who compares
the form of the natural foot with the last upon which the shoemaker
makes the covering for that foot. This, in the words of the late Mr.
Dowie, “is shaped in front like a wedge, the thick part or instep rising
in a ridge from the centre or middle toe, instead of the great toe, as
in the foot, slanting off to both sides from the middle, terminating at
each side and in front like a wedge; that for the inside or great toe
being similar to that for the outside or little toe, as if the human
foot had the great toe in the middle and a little toe at each side, like
the foot of a goose!” The great error in all boots and shoes made upon
the system now in vogue in all parts of the civilised world lies in this
method of construction upon a principle of bilateral symmetry. A
straight line drawn along the sole from the middle of the toe to the
heel will divide a fashionable boot into two equal and similar parts, a
small allowance being made at the middle part, or “waist,” for the
difference between right and left foot. Whether the toe is made broad or
narrow, it is always equally inclined at the sides towards the middle
line; whereas in the foot there
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--English feet deformed by wearing
improperly-shaped shoes. From nature.]
is no such symmetry. The first or inner toe is much larger than either
of the others, and its direction is perfectly parallel with the long
axis of the foot. The second toe may be a little longer than the first,
as generally represented in Grecian art, but it is more frequently
shorter;[80] the others rapidly decrease in size (Fig. 29, A). The
modification which must have taken place in the form of the foot and
direction of the toes before a boot of the ordinary form can be worn
with any approach to ease is shown at Fig. 29, C. (p. 344). Often it
will happen that the deformity has not advanced to so great an extent,
but every one who has had the opportunity of examining many feet,
especially among the poorer classes, must have met with many far worse.
The two figured (Fig. 30), one (C) from a labouring man, the other (A
and B) from a working woman, both patients at a London hospital, are
very ordinary examples of the European artificial deformity of the foot,
and afford good subjects for comparison with the Chinese foot (Fig. 28).
It not unfrequently happens that the dislocation of the great toe is
carried so far that it becomes placed almost at a right angle to the
long axis of the foot, lying across the roots of the other toes.
In walking and especially running, the action of the foot is as follows:
The heel is first lifted from the ground, and the weight of the body
gradually transferred through the middle to the anterior end of the
foot, and the final push or impulse given with the great toe. It is
necessary then that these parts should all be in a straight line with
one another. Any deflection, especially of the great toe, from its
proper direction, or any weakening of its bones, ligaments, or muscles,
must be detrimental to the proper use of the foot in progression.
Against this it will perhaps be urged that there are many fairly good
walkers and runners among us whose great toes have been considerably
changed from the normal position in consequence of wearing pointed boots
while young. This may be perfectly true, but it is also well known that
several persons, as the late Miss Biffin, and an artist familiar to all
frequenters of the Antwerp picture gallery, have acquired considerable
facility in the use of the brush, though possessing neither hands nor
arms, the one painting only from the shoulder, and the other with the
feet. The compensating power of nature is very wonderful, and when one
part is absent or crippled, other means are found of doing its work, but
always at a disadvantage as compared with those best fitted for the
duty.
The loss of elasticity and motion in the joints of the foot, as well as
the wrong direction acquired by the great toe, are in most persons
seriously detrimental to free and easy progression, and can only be
compensated for by a great expenditure of muscular power in other parts
of the body, applied in a disadvantageous manner. The labouring men of
this country, who from their childhood wear heavy, stiff, and
badly-shaped boots, and in whom, consequently, the play of the ankle,
feet, and toes is lost, have generally small and shapeless legs and
wasted calves, and walk as if on stilts, with a swinging motion from the
hips. Our infantry soldiers also suffer much in the same manner, the
regulation boots in use in the service being exceedingly ill-adapted for
the development of the feet. Much injury to the general health--the
necessary consequence of any impediment to freedom of bodily
exercise--must also be attributed to this cause. Since some of the
leading shoemakers have ventured to deviate a little from the
conventional shape, those persons who can afford to be specially fitted
are better off as a rule than the majority of poorer people, who,
although caring less for appearance, and being more dependent for their
livelihood upon the physical welfare of their bodies, are obliged to
wear ready-made shoes of the form that an inexorable custom has
prescribed.
The changes that a foot has to undergo in order to adapt itself to the
ordinary shape of a shoe could probably not be effected unless commenced
at an early period, when it is young and capable of being gradually
moulded into the required form.
The English mother or nurse who thrusts the tender feet of a young child
into stiff, unyielding, pointed shoes or boots, often regardless of the
essential difference in form of right and left, at a time when freedom
is especially needed for their proper growth and development, is the
exact counterpart of the Chinook Indian woman, applying her bandages and
boards to the opposite end of her baby’s body, only with considerably
less excuse; for a distorted head apparently less affects health and
comfort than cramped and misshapen feet, and was also esteemed of more
vital importance to preferment in Chinook society. Any one who
recollects the boots of the late Lord Palmerston will be reminded that a
wide expanse of shoe leather is in this country, even during the
prevalence of an opposite fashion, quite compatible with the attainment
of the highest political and social eminence.
No sensible person can really suppose that there is anything in itself
ugly, or even unsightly, in the form of a perfect human foot; and yet
all attempts to construct shoes upon its model are constantly met with
the objection that something extremely inelegant must be the result. It
will perhaps be a form to which the eye is not quite accustomed; but
there is no more trite observation than the arbitrary nature of fashion
in her dealings with our outward appearance, and we all know how
anything which has received her sanction is for the time considered
elegant and tasteful, though a few years later it may come to be looked
upon as positively ridiculous. That our eye would soon get used to
admire a different shape may be easily proved by any one who will for a
short time wear shoes constructed upon a more correct principle, when
the prevailing pointed shoes, suggestive of cramped and atrophied toes,
become positively painful to look upon.
A glance at a series of pictures of costume at various periods of
English history will show how fashion has changed at different times
with respect to the coverings of the feet. The fact that the excessively
pointed, elongated toes of the time of Richard II., for instance, were
superseded by the broad, round toed, almost elephantine, but most
comfortable shoes seen in the portraits of Henry VIII. and his
contemporaries, shows that there is nothing in the former essential to
the gratification of the æsthetic instincts of mankind. Each form was
doubtless equally admired in the time of its prevalence.
It is not only leather boots and shoes that are to blame for producing
alterations in the form of the feet; even the stocking, comparatively
soft and pliable as it is, when made with pointed toes and similar form
for both sides, must take its share. The continual, steady, though
gentle pressure, keeps the toes squeezed together, and especially
hinders the recovery of its proper form and mobility, when attempts at
curing a misshapen foot are being made by wearing shoes of rational
construction. Socks adapted to the different form of the two feet, or
“rights and lefts,” are occasionally to be met with at hosiers, and it
would add greatly to comfort if they were more generally adopted. For
some cases it is well to have them made with distinct toes like gloves.
With such socks and properly constructed shoes, a much distorted foot,
even of a middle-aged person, will recover its power and freedom of
motion to a considerable extent.
Only one thing is needed to aggravate the evil effect of a pointed toe,
and that is the absurdly high and narrow heel so often seen now on
ladies’ boots, which throws the whole foot, and in fact the whole body,
into an unnatural position in walking, produces diseases well known to
all surgeons in large practice, and makes the nearest approach yet
effected by any European nation to the Chinese custom, which we
generally speak of with surprise and reprobation. And yet this fashion
appears just now on the increase among people who boast of the highest
civilisation to which the world has yet attained.
[Illustration:
FIG. 31.--Modern Parisian shoe, copied from a recent advertisement.
The nearest European representative of the Chinese deformity
depicted in Fig. 27, p. 342.
]
The practice of turning out the toes, so much insisted on by dancing
masters, when it becomes habitual, is a deformity. Although in standing
in an easy position the whole limb may be rotated outwards from the hip,
so as to give a broader basis of support, in walking or running the hip,
knee, ankle, and joints of the foot are simple hinges, and it is
essential for the proper co-ordination of their actions that they should
all work in the same plane, which can only be the case when the toes are
pointed directly forward, and the feet nearly parallel to one another.
Any deviation from this position must interfere with the true action of
the foot when raising and propelling the body, as explained at p. 346.
Turning out the toes is, moreover, a common cause of weak ankles, as it
throws the weight of the body chiefly on the inside, instead of
distributing it equally over all parts of the joint.
I must speak lastly of one of the most remarkable of all the artificial
deformities produced by adherence to a conventional standard, in
defiance of the dictates of nature and reason.
[Illustration:
FIG. 32.
Torso of the statue of Venus of Milo.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 33.
Paris fashion, May 1880.
]
Of all parts of the body, the elastic and mobile walls of the chest
would seem most to need preservation from external constriction, if they
are to perform efficiently the important purposes for which their
peculiar structure is specially designed. The skull is a solid case,
with tolerably uniform walls, the capacity of which remains the same,
whatever alteration is made in its shape. Pressure on one part is
compensated for by dilatation elsewhere; the body is not so, it may be
compared to a cylinder with a fixed length, determined by the vertebral
column, and closed above and below by a framework of bone. Circular
compression then must actually diminish the area which has to be
occupied by some of the most important vital organs. Moreover, the
framework of the chest is a most admirable and complex arrangement of
numerous pieces of solid bone and elastic cartilage, jointed together in
such a manner as to allow of expansion and contraction for the purposes
of respiration--expansion and contraction which, if a function so
essential to the preservation of life and health is to be performed in
an efficient manner, should be perfectly free and capable of variation
under different circumstances. So, indeed, it has been allowed to be in
all parts of the world and in all ages, with one exception. It was
reserved for mediæval civilised Europe to have invented the system of
squeezing together, rendering immobile, and actually deforming, the most
important part of the human frame; and the custom has been handed down
to, and flourishes in, our day, notwithstanding all our professed
admiration for the models of classical antiquity, and our awakened
attention to the laws of health.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Normal form of the skeleton of the chest.]
It is only necessary to compare these two Figures (Figs. 32 and
33),--one acknowledged by all the artistic and anatomical world to be a
perfect example of the natural female form,--to be convinced of the
gravity of the structural changes that must have taken place in such a
form before it could be reduced so far as to occupy the space shown in
the second figure, an exact copy of one of the models now held up for
imitation in the fashionable world. The actual changes that have taken
place in the bony framework of the chest are seen by comparing Figures
34 and 35, the one showing the normal form, the other the result of
long-continued tight-lacing. The alterations in the shape and position
of the organs within need not be dwelt upon here; they and the evil
effects arising from them are abundantly discussed in medical works.
When it is considered that the organs which are affected are those by
which the important functions of respiration, circulation, and digestion
are carried on, as well as those essential to the proper development and
healthy growth of future generations, it is no wonder that people suffer
who have reduced themselves to live under such conditions.[81]
[Illustration:
FIG. 35.--Skeleton of the chest of a woman, twenty-three years of
age, deformed by tight-lacing, from Rüdinger’s _Anatomie des
Menschen_. By no means an extreme case.
]
The true form of the human body is familiar to us, as just said, from
classic models; it is familiar from the works of our greatest modern
artists which adorn the Academy walls. It is, however, quite possible,
or even probable, that some of us may think the present fashionable
shape the more beautiful of the two. In such case it would be well to
pause to consider whether we are sure that our judgment is sound on the
subject. Let us remember that to the Australian the nose-peg is an
admired ornament; that to the Thlinkeet, the Botocudo, and the Bongo
negro, the lip dragged down by the heavy plug, and the ears distended by
huge discs of wood, are things of beauty; that the Malay prefers teeth
that are black to those of the most pearly whiteness; that the native
American despises the form of a head not flattened down like a pancake,
or elongated like a sugar-loaf,--and then let us carefully ask ourselves
whether we are sure that in leaving nature as a standard of the
beautiful, and adopting a purely conventional one, we are not falling
into an error exactly similar to that of all these people whose tastes
we are so ready to condemn.
The fact is, that in admiring such distorted forms as the constricted
waist and symmetrically pointed foot, we are opposing our judgment to
that of the Maker of our bodies; we are neglecting the criterion
afforded by nature; we are departing from the highest standard of
classical antiquity; we are simply putting ourselves on a level in point
of taste with those Australians, Botocudos, and Negroes. We are taking
fashion, and nothing better, higher, or truer, for our guide; and after
the various examples which have now been brought forward, may we not
well ask, with Shakespeare,
“SEEST THOU NOT, WHAT A DEFORMED THIEF THIS FASHION IS?”
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
XXI
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF PROFESSOR ROLLESTON[82]
George Rolleston’s death, which took place in Oxford on 16th June 1881,
may well be called premature, as he was in the prime of life, and but a
few months before seemed to all, except a few closely observant intimate
associates, still in the plentitude of his powers, and capable of much
good work in time to come.
The son of a Yorkshire clergyman, he was born at Maltby, on 30th July
1829, and had, therefore, not completed his fifty-second year. His early
aptitude for classical studies, carried on under the instruction of his
father, must have been most remarkable if, as has been stated in one of
his biographies, he was able at the age of ten to read any passage of
Homer at sight. He was not educated at one of the great public schools,
but entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, took a First Class in classics
in 1850, and was elected a Fellow of his college in 1851. He then
studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, joined the staff of the
British Civil Hospital at Smyrna during the latter part of the Crimean
war, was appointed assistant-physician to the Children’s Hospital in
London, 1857, but took up his residence again at Oxford in the same year
on receiving the appointment of Lee’s Reader in Anatomy in Christchurch.
In 1860 he was elected to the newly-founded Linacre Professorship of
Anatomy and Physiology, which he held to the time of his death. He was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1862, and a Fellow of Merton
College, Oxford, in 1872. He was a member of the Council of the
University, and its representative in the General Medical Council, and
also an active member of the Oxford Local Board.
In 1861 he married Grace, daughter of Dr. John Davy, F.R.S., and niece
of Sir Humphrey Davy, and he leaves a family of seven children.
The duties of the Linacre professorship involved the teaching of a wide
range of subjects included under the terms of physiology and anatomy,
human and comparative, to which he added the hitherto neglected but
important subject of anthropology, as well as the care of a great and
ever-growing museum. In the present condition of scientific knowledge it
requires a man of very versatile intellect and extensive powers of
reading to maintain anything like an adequate acquaintance with the
current literature of any one of these subjects, much more to undertake
original observations on his own account. Even a man of Rolleston’s
powers felt the impossibility of any one person doing justice to the
chair as thus constituted, and strongly urged the necessity of dividing
it into three professorships,--one of physiology, one of comparative
anatomy, and one of human anatomy and anthropology. The work which he
did, however, contrive to find time to publish, and by which he will be
chiefly known to posterity, is remarkable for its thoroughness. He never
committed himself to writing without having completely mastered
everything that had been previously written upon the subject, and his
memoirs bristle with quotations from, and references to, authors of all
ages and all nations. The abundance with which these were supplied by
his wonderful memory, and the readiness with which, both in speaking and
writing, his thoughts clothed themselves with appropriate words,
sometimes made it difficult for ordinary minds to follow the train of
his argument through long and voluminous sentences, often made up of
parenthesis within parenthesis.
The work which was most especially the outcome of his professorial
duties is the _Forms of Animal Life_, published at the Clarendon Press
in 1870. Though written chiefly with a view to the needs of the
University students, it is capable of application to more general
purposes, and is one of the earliest and most complete examples of
instruction by the study of a series of types, now becoming so general.
As he says in the preface, “The distinctive character of the book
consists in its attempting so to combine the concrete facts of zootomy
with the outlines of systematic classification, as to enable the student
to put them for himself into their natural relations of foundation and
superstructure. The foundations may be wide, and the superstructure may
have its outlines not only filled up, but even considerably altered by
subsequent and more extensive labours; but the mutual relations of the
one as foundation and the other as superstructure which this book
particularly aims at illustrating, must always remain the same.”