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Every care should be taken that the insensible perspiration of the feet should be encouraged and allowed to pass off freely. Dr. Wilson, in his "Practical Treatise on Healthy Skin," says:To arrive at something like an estimate of the value of the perspiratory system, in relation to the rest of the organism, I counted the perspiratory pores on the palm of the hand, and found 3,528 to the square inch, (on the heel where the ridges are coarser 2,268). Now each of these pores being the aperture of a little tube of about a quarter of an inch long, it follows that in a square inch of skin, there exists a length of tube equal to 882 inches, or 73 feet. Surely, such an amount of drainage as 73 feet in every square inch of skin, assuming this to be the average for the whole body, is something wonderful, and the thought naturally intrudes itself what if this drainage were obstructed ?"

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This is too often the case, improper shoes and waterproof materials, not only check the natural evaporation of the skin, but eventually produce diseases of the feet in the worst form; nothing so much conduces to general comfort, as the feet and ankles being in a healthy state, and few things tell upon the manners and temper more than constant pain and irritability of the extremities. 4 bus The fashions of boots and shoes have met with

their share of our attention and research, the errors of form and make have been pointed out, the best remedies have been suggested, it now only remains for us to adhere as closely to nature's laws as possible. Art may do much, but even Miss Kilmansegg's "precious leg" of pure gold, was but a poor substitute for her more precious lost one.

"Peace and ease, and slumber lost,

She turned, and rolled, and tumbled, and tossed,

With a tumult that would not settle;

A common case indeed with such,
As have too little, or think too much,
Of the precious and glittering metal.

"Gold! she saw at her golden foot,

The peer whose tree had an olden root,
The proud, the great, the learned to boot,
The handsome, the gay, and the witty-
The man of science, of arms, of art,
The man who deals but at pleasure's mart,
And the man who deals in the city."

(1.) Many are the hints thrown out by some of our old herbalists, in their quaint language, as to the power of some of our indigenous herbs. One which has certainly some slight influence on corns, and is a great favorite among the popular writers on corns, is the common house-leek, the sedum

murale. This herb which is found growing on the tops of old garden-walls and upon the roofs of houses, has a leaf of considerable thickness, owing to the large quantity of cellular tissue between its upper and lower lamina, in whose interstices is found considerable juice, which abounds with hydrochloric acid in a free and uncombined state. Owing, doubtless, to the presence of the acid, the juice acts upon the indurated mass, softening and destroying the surface, but leaving the lower parts as great a source of mischief as ever, and sometimes converting the corn into a more hardened mass than it was before.—The Diseases of the Feet.

(2.) "There is another way of disposing of a corn," says Mr. Erasmus Wilson, "which I have been in the habit of recommending to my friends; it is effectual, and obviates the necessity for the use of the knife. Have some common sticking-plaster spread on buff leather; cut a piece sufficiently large to cover the corn and skin around, and have a hole punched in the middle of exactly the size of the summit of the corn. Now take some common soda of the oil-shops, and make it into a paste, with about half its bulk of soap; fill the hole in the plaster with this paste, and cover it with a piece of sticking-plaster. Let this be done at bed-time, and in the morning remove the plaster, and wash the

corn with warm water. If this operation be repeated every second, third, or fourth day, for a short time, the corn will be removed. The only precaution required to be used is to avoid causing pain; and so long as any tenderness occasioned by the remedy lasts, it must not be repeated. When the corn is reduced within reasonable bounds by either of the above modes, or when it is only threatening, and has not yet risen to the height of being a sore annoyance, the best of all remedies is a piece of soft buff leather, spread with soap-plaster, and pierced in the centre with a hole exactly the size of the summit of the corn."

(3.) It is usually the custom to soak the corns previously to cutting them. As this is not always convenient, the following method of rendering the corn soft will serve instead. Take a strip of washleather, of size sufficient to cover the corn, and a strip of oiled silk rather larger; wet the leather and apply it to the corn, then cover it with the oiled silk, which will prevent the leather from becoming dry. Keep this on for a few days, wetting the leather two or three times a day. This will render the corn so soft that the razor may be applied without causing pain.

CHAPTER VII.

HISTORY OF BOOTS AND SHOES IN THE UNITED STATES.

THE

'HE first settlers of New England, Virginia, He first series of mies in America, brought

with them to this country, the fashions of dress which were prevalent in England at the time of their emigration, being the same as described in the preceding pages, with regard to boots and shoes in use in the seventeenth century, in the reigns of the Stuarts, or under the dominion of the commonwealth, when Cromwell was at the head of affairs. New England being settled by the puritans, the dresses of the first English inhabitants of that section were of a plainer character than those of Virginia and other colonies, where the first settlers were cavaliers, or adherents of the house of Stuart.

The dress, particularly the boots and shoes, worn by the earlier settlers of New England, are thus described by Miss Caulkins, in her "History of Norwich, Connecticut." "The shoes worn in 1689, were coarse, clumped, square-toed, and adorned

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