sensible, will, when trying on boots, exclaim when they feel painful pressure on any part of the foot, and insist on having something more comfortable, the child, whose new boots are a size larger than the old ones, finds relief in them, and only discovers their fault too late when the growing foot finds the uppers rigid and hard, and the toes are again compressed. By this means the process of deforming the foot is rendered gradual and less painful than might be supposed from the degree of harm done.
As yet I have said nothing about in-door shoes, although they are quite as important, if not more important, than out-door shoes and boots, since they are generally worn for a greater number of hours in the day. To get rationally-shaped house or dancing shoes I have found a literal impossibility, owing to the fact that showy and fashionable-looking shoes are made and imported at such low prices that few shoemakers will go to the expense of keeping a stock of properly-constructed articles. The harm done by those pointed-toed patent leather shoes which one can get so cheap is incalculable, and their effects are seen every day in hospital and private practice. An eminent surgeon, my friend Mr. R. Fitzroy Benham, tells me that when a student at one of the chief London hospitals he extracted very many ingrowing toe-nails, and a great number of these were cases of ladies'-maids and servants, who, either wearing their mistresses' cast-off shoes or aping the fashions of their betters, suffer extremely through having to be on their feet all day when
