this kind of inflammation of the bones, and their investing membrane, may lead to the formation of matter, and eventually to the disease known as caries or ulceration of the bone.[1]
Such are the principal injuries to the foot resulting from the pressure of ill-constructed shoes, and they are of sufficient importance to induce me to confine my remarks to them alone. I shall therefore only very briefly allude to the constant irritation which the pressure of such a shoe occasions to the skin, giving rise to the proverbially sensitive corns, and to those painful thickenings of the skin usually known as bunions.
I must, however, explain at somewhat greater length how the improper form of the shoe becomes one of the chief causes of flat-foot.
Flat-foot is occasioned by the loosening of the ligaments that knit the foot firmly together, and by the consequent sinking of the arch, the inner aspect of the foot no longer presents the natural hollow in the sole. The causes of such loosening of the ligaments are numer-
- ↑ In connexion with this I wish to explain, that I by no means desire to question the existence of such inflammations of this joint as are commonly attributed to gout; in by far the greater number of cases, however, inflammation of the metatarso-phalangeal joint of the great toe is traumatic, as above described; and even with regard to the occurrence of gouty inflammations, the causes above alluded to give an obvious reason for the formation, at the points indicated, of a locus minonoris resistentiæ.
