The foot and its covering : comprising a full translation of Dr. Camper's work on "The best form of shoe" / by James Dowie.

  • Dowie, James.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The foot and its covering : comprising a full translation of Dr. Camper's work on "The best form of shoe" / by James Dowie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    It is more than probable that in those persons whose feet have not been distorted by the use of high heels, the heel-bone receives the anterior part of the astragalus {H, Fig. 1) upon the eminence 31, L, which is then divided into two small sinuses (E and F, Fig. 4), separated by a space, K. Very frequently, however, we find but one sinus, as at E, F, Fig. 5. We naturally inquire which of these formations is the natural one. The celebrated Vesalius has distinctly repre- sented and described these two sinuses or de- pressions. Albinus mentions them particularly in his smaller work upon the Bones, but in the illustrations to his work on the Skeleton, he has represented one only. Winslow mentions but one ; and Sue, in his engravings illustrative of the works of Monro, gives one only. Bidloo shows two in his drawing of the heel-bone, PI. 105 of his work on Anatomy. It appears to me very probable, then, that these sinuses become united from the pressure to which they are subjected by high heels, causing the obli- teration of the division K. I possess the heel-bones of a new-born infant and of a child of two years of age, in both of which the two sinuses are distinctly marked. Albinus has represented them double, in his drawings of the bones of children. It is therefore evident that they are frequently, and probably more often, double than