Richard Cole Newton

“ Of course if people walk very little, they can endure the arch supporters, just as the women endure the high heels. It would seem that ordinary boots and shoes are not made to walk in, but to look at, or perhaps to ride in. ”

“ Why we have the insane delusion that our feet should be small, out of all proportion to our bodies, no one so far as I know can explain. Orators have praised small feet, and poets have sung to them. Fashion plates have depicted them and lovers have sighed for them, and really from want of proper use, from compression and from the consequent arrested development because of their being encased in unyielding leather boxes from early childhood, our feet are much smaller in proportion to our size and weight than they should be. ”

“ I often think of this occurrence when I see women trying to walk with Cuban heels and shoes far too short and too narrow for them. That their gait is singularly stilted and ungraceful every one knows, yet how they manage to walk as well as they do is surprising. ”

“ Then we wear an arch supporter to still further cripple a weak foot and wear high heels under the mistaken impression that they keep up the instep. Of course when the arch gives way, as it often does because it is too weak to spring back after it has spread out in stepping under the weight of the body, a supporter in the shoe must be temporarily worn. Yet every effort should be made to strengthen that arch by running, walking on the toes in the bare feet, applying massage and electricity to the muscles of the calf, and toning up the general system. ”

“ The arch of the foot must go down whenever one bears his weight upon it, and the foot must spread out. For long tramps nothing could be more painful than shoes with metal arch supporters in them. Like all these attempts to interfere with nature's methods, of which man, not to say woman, has ever been guilty, wearing arch supporters may be a cause of terrible suffering, if one has to walk any distance with them in his shoes or boots. ”

“ This is about as sensible as it would be to support a weak arm by binding it up in splints and making it immovable, hoping that if it could not be raised, it would gradually grow strong and robust. Even a shoemaker would laugh at such a method of making a child's arm strong, and yet he boasts that he makes a weak arch strong by preventing it from taking its natural exercise. ”

“ We bring our children up to despise the Chinese who deliberately distort and malform the feet of their female children. Our virtuous conversation incites in our children's minds a horror of the foot-binding process by which the Mongolian parents prevent the natural growth of their daughters' feet and thus improve (sic) upon nature, and yet we allow our daughters to wear so-called Cuban heels and French heels and pointed-toed shoes, sometimes called one-toed shoes, until their feet are as truly malformed as the Chinese woman's, albeit in a less degree. ”

“ That the firm well-rounded chin, the resolute jaw and symmetrical cheeks, and the appearance of decision, vigor and alertness so necessary for either male or female beauty of expression, belong by right to every American man and woman; not to mention the fact that the "laughing pearls" of perfect teeth can be possessed by any one, and some one has sinned, either the man or his parents, if the denture is defective and the jaws ill-developed. ”

“ A rather ingenious explanation of the marked disproportion between the size of the teeth and that of the jaw in many Americans, as for example, large teeth in small jaws, so that the former are crowded out of position and overlap one another, is that the big teeth are inherited from one parent and the small jaws from the other. ”

“ There should be plenty of room in the shoe for the toes to do this, and it is largely because the toes are so tightly confined in pointed shoes and can not spread out that Americans are such poor walkers. The ridiculous high heels are unsightly and injurious and make walking difficult, yet they do not deform the foot, the most beautiful and exquisitely designed of all our organs except our hands, to the same extent as do the short and pointed shoes so commonly worn. ”

“ In like manner the chiropodist might be supposed to rejoice, if one in his humble calling has the springs of joy within him, over the equally great rarity, a perfect adult human foot. For there is only one other thing so generally distorted and defective as the average human jaw, and that is the average human foot. ”

“ I remember an elaborate article in some magazine, some years ago, which explained the great prevalence of poor teeth in America by saying, that they are caused by our habit of shaving our faces, while the orientals have sore and weak eyes because they shave their heads. The filth in which the latter live was not taken into account, nor the fact that the American women, who do not shave, have as bad teeth as the men. ”

“ We are assured that no Chinese woman of rank can expect to marry well if she has natural feet, like a working woman, any more than our girls expect to marry well if they have a natural waist. A Chinese lady of high degree abroad upon the highways must be attended by two or three maids or helpers supporting her, to show to the admiring multitude that she can not walk without help. ”

“ For that matter, teeth, as is well known, can be extracted, cleaned and put back again, or teeth from one persons mouth can be put into the place of an extracted tooth in another's mouth and become firmly imbedded and do good service for years. The part of the jaw-bone that embraces the roots of the teeth is called the alveolar process, and it continues to grow and harden for some time after the teeth have been erupted, or after they have changed their places in the jaw. ”

“ That means that we cultivate our great toes and let all the others atrophy for want of use, when they are not doubled up or twisted over each other so that standing on the feet for any length of time, not to mention walking, is exceedingly painful and sometimes impossible. In these cases the pointed shoes have been adopted after the smaller toes have grown somewhat, and like those of the unfortunate Chinese girls, they must be crowded out of the way, for no genteel person in either China or America can afford to have the toes spread out as nature intended them to be. ”

“ Provided, that the lower jaw and the tongue and lips are strong and well developed, made so by sufficient chewing, especially from the years of two to six, in a child's life. If the child's education in chewing, however, has been neglected, the dentist can and does spread the jaw as already stated, so that it will have room enough for all the teeth. In other words, orthodontia does what nature would accomplish unaided were her simple laws of development properly observed.
A full set of teeth forms a beautiful arch, no stone of which should be missing. ”

“ I can nearly always tell by a woman's gait whether she is wearing shoes that really fit her or not. A woman properly shod may and often does show the queenly dignity and lissome grace which should characterize the most graceful of God's creatures. ”

“ Every one of the ten toes should be allowed to grow to its proper size and should exert its due pressure on the ground when we walk, jump or run. The natural foot is a perfect arch, and its two columns the ball of the foot and the heel should be on an exact level, which means that the heel of the shoe should not be over a half inch in height. The heel of the shoe should also be large, in fact, nearly as broad as the broadest part of the sole. The inside of the shoe should be three quarters of an inch longer and a half inch broader than the foot that it is meant to cover. ”

“ The natural teeth then have an individuality in keeping with each particular face, and when they are in good condition and in their proper position, can not but add to the beauty, dignity and symmetry of the face. Three people out of four seem to lack in the proper development of the lower part of the face by reason of defective and misplaced teeth, and weak and ill-developed jaws. ”

“ So far as walking for any distance is concerned, no American expects to do that. It is because the feet are so undeveloped and their ligaments and muscles are so weak, that so many people suffer with flat feet or with weak arches. So that now, all the shoemakers are putting steel arch supporters in the shoes. ”

“ The writings of Bogue and others have proved that the small jaws and irregular teeth of Americans are due to the simple fact that the teeth and jaw bones have never been developed by chewing hard foods as nature intended us to do. ”

“ It is not true, that the teeth must fit into the jaws; the reverse is true, the jaws form themselves around the teeth. The bone grows around the roots of the teeth and forms a socket like the mortar or cement around the bricks in a fire-place. This is easily demonstrated; a tooth, for example, can be completely turned round or moved from one place to another, and, as we say, it grows "fast." ”

“ Harry Campbell, of England, have said that the trouble is not hereditary at all, but begins in each person's babyhood, and that our teeth are poor and irregular and our jaws contracted because we do not exercise these parts sufficiently from infancy to manhood; especially from weaning until six years of age, when the permanent teeth begin to erupt. In support of this statement they point out that the first set of teeth is practically never irregular, never overlaps and is very seldom defective. ”

“ Just as our jaws suffer from non-development, which is the foundation of our adenoids, mouth breathing, poor digestion and mal-assimilation, not only because of our poor and irregular teeth, but because we do not get enough oxygen in our systems when we are growing for proper development, so we suffer from weak and malformed feet because these have not only not been developed by exercise, but have not even been allowed to grow to their natural size. ”

“ Upon this elemental truth is founded the art of orthodontia. Were the facts not as stated, it would do no good to alter the positions of teeth, since they would not retain their new positions after they had been moved into them. The fact that the jaws can be widened by spreading the teeth, taken in conjunction with the adaptibility of the "alveolar" process, make the remarkable results of the orthodontist possible. ”

“ So far as the improper development or non-development of our teeth, jaws, tongues and lips is concerned, the trouble begins with the nursing bottle from which the infant gets its nourishment too easily and too rapidly, so that these important structures are all more or less undeveloped, and this non-development is a continuous performance up to adult life. ”

“ They belong in the same category with the people in Philadelphia, who objected to opening some playgrounds to children, because the latter shouted when they played. Just as if play without shouting could be any good for young children ”

“ The beautiful lines of a baby's face are not distorted by irregular or protruding teeth, nor sunken by reason of the non-support of sufficiently wide jaws. The teeth of savages, Hottentots and Esquimaux are almost invariably excellent, and their jaws and tongues are wider and stronger than ours. ”

“ In fact, such a result is directly opposite to nature's beneficent course in admixtures of different races and species, where the tendency is to preserve the best and strongest features and eliminate the weak and faulty ones. ”

“ Hence we see that the "man of destiny," "the man with firm jaw, who knows his own mind," is presumably one who was made to chew properly in childhood, and was not allowed to wash down his food half chewed, or unchewed by gulps of liquid. ”

“ This is not wonderful because the proper digestion of starchy food must begin in the mouth, and is impossible without complete mastication. We are told in Science that in feeding meal to calves, "it must be spread" thinly upon the bottom of the troughs so that it will be eaten slowly and insalivated." This is only one instance out of many where man's commercial instinct has taught him an invaluable truth in regard to the rearing of stock, that has a market value, but which it never seems to have occurred to him is just as important in connection with the rearing of his own children. ”

“ Osier has said that the question of preserving the teeth is more important than the liquor question. When one reflects that a great deal of intemperance is caused by dyspepsia, with its mental and physical deterioration, and that the underlying cause of much of the generally prevalent dyspepsia is the decayed and defective teeth, which preclude complete mastication of the food (even if anybody in America had the time to eat properly) , the solid truth of Dr. ”