Hints for health : being two lectures on the influence of air, water, food, and wine on the system / by J. Sherwood Stocker.

  • Stocker, John Sherwood.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for health : being two lectures on the influence of air, water, food, and wine on the system / by J. Sherwood Stocker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    19/60 (page 11)
    In many instances conscripts have been entirely placed hors de combat by sores on the feet (caused by ill-fitting boots), producing- such distress as to prevent their marching. Another illustration showing the evils consequent upon a neglect of natural laws, will at once make the above remarks plain. Most people have at some time or other suffered pain inflicted by a corn at the side of the foot or toe, or from the inconvenience arising from a swelling over the joint of the great toe commonly called a bunion. These troubles have (in almost every instance) arisen from the faulty construction of a boot or shoe, depending upon ignorance on the part of the bootmaker of the natural conformation, form, and structure of the foot; for really corns and bunions are simply efforts on the part of nature, to protect portions of the skin or joints of the foot from pressure and friction to which they had been unduly subject. Eemove the pressure and the com or bunion will generally disappear. We must not, however, forget that in particular trades certain portions of the skin become thickened, which otherwise would be greatly inconvenienced from pressure, viz., the palm of the hand in the cobbler, and the inner side of the palm in the calenderer. Advantage has been taken of the benefit known to have been derived from planting the bamboo (as has been done at Hong Kong and other tropical places) as a prophylactic against ague, malaria, etc., the rhizome of this grass sending off rootlets in all directions, rapidly causing the absorption of the moisture which would otherwise be retained in the earth, to be given forth at other periods; and probably the stalks also of the growing plant absorb a largo amount of carbonic acid gas, and also other deleterious matters in the air, which would otherwise prove injurious. In our own country we plant trees in our larger cities and towns, to render them more healthy by absorbing the carbonic acid and moisture, together with other substances noxious to mankind, and increasing the amount of oxygen in the air. Another plant which has a peculiar interest at the present time, from its having been suggested to transplant it from its native