McComber's tracks for 1883. : Comprising descriptions of McComber's institution for the radical cure of foot distortions by conservative surgery, and also of McComber's fashionable army and navy shoes for ladies and gentlemen.

  • McComber, Joel
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: McComber's tracks for 1883. : Comprising descriptions of McComber's institution for the radical cure of foot distortions by conservative surgery, and also of McComber's fashionable army and navy shoes for ladies and gentlemen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    constructed shoes deadens all sensibility and destroys all ]jower. The poor feet hang as nearly lifeless appendages, and their owner thinks they are perfect, because they do not hurt him. It is a thousand pities that they hurt him not. A painful foot is a good foot, a promising foot, because it has life enough left to complain. It will not be abused with¬ out uttering a howl of remonstrance ; being aliye, it speaketh ; being cruelly hurt, it re- sisteth ; being wickedly tortured, it cryeth aloud. Thus, a painful corn is a genuine blessing, because it tells us that life remains, and therefore hope. Seek not to palliate this friendly monitor by the methods of the yile corn-doctor, but let him remain watchfully at his post, to warn and threaten and com¬ mand. The twinges of feet not utterly paralyzed, added to those of a conscience not wholly seared, may impel you to seek for your greatly abused extremities that life and health and beauty which my skill is able to impart. Better to continue to suffer than to lapse into the forgetfulness of death. Better to remain in j)urgatory, escape from which is possible, than go forward to the death wdiich is eternal. Let the poor dead yictims, uncon¬ scious of the death which has already inyaded the lower extremities, continue to hobble about without knowing the joys which come from yigorous muscular power, manifested in the delightful exercise of walking. Nothing sayes the owners of these dead feet from the graye, except the fact that at night, during tile hours of sleep, the shackles are remoyed.
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