GOOD HEALTH | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1878

GOOD HEALTH.

Tight Boots.

It might seem almost incredible that so many of the young persist in wearing boots at least one size too short, and still more faulty in reference to the width. It is strange that an idea should prevail that a small foot is any more creditable to a young lady than a small brain, a small heart, or a small amount of common sense, and yet it is true that very few are willing to wear an easy and comfortable boot, one resembling the form and width of the foot. When the Chinese, as a punishment for the treachery of woman, condemned them to wear from infancy, a small, unyielding shoe, that they might be so crippled as never to be able again to betray them, it certainly had the look of malice and savage revenge, such as we might expect from the "heathen Chinee" of centuries in the dim past. But why young ladies in the nineteenth century, or young fops, should subject themselves to this self-imposed punishment, the tortures of corns, bunions enlarged and gouty joints, and general deformity, is difficult to see, save on the supposition that Dame Fashion is not only very unreasonable and senseless in her demands, but very exacting in her requirements.

If small and beautiful feet are really ornamental, let such remember that the wearing of too small boots will certainly deform them, destroy their symmetry, as all may learn by an examination of feet thus compressed, crowded in too small a space, cramped and changed in their form by narrow boots. These errors, and with the small and high heel added, have much to do in the production of the many deformities of the feet, while it must be admitted that a natural foot though large and differing somewhat from the more usual form, is more comely than one pinched and abused till it assumes an unnatural shape. In the natural foot, a straight line from the center of the heel will extend to the end of the large toe, parallel to the line of that toe, but in far too many instances, when a tight boot is worn especially with a high heel, pressing the foot, forward, that toe turns inward of necessity, since it strikes the end of the boot, and, from its length, must turn to one side or the other, usually inward. When too narrow, also, with insufficient room for all, one or more of the toes must be pressed up, overlapping another. It is possible, therefore, to buy a small and genteel boot, but one cannot, in consequence of such a purchase, have a small and genteel foot, if to be small is genteel. The foot will increase in size and deformity by such a course of cruel treatment.—Sel.