Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 146, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1910 — THE FAMILY DOCTOR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE FAMILY DOCTOR

Corns. In the present article a departure is made from the usual custom, and treatment, and little else than treatment, is considered. Doctors as a rule ignore corns, seeming to regard their treatment as belonging exclusively to the chiropodist. The result of this is, as usually happens when the uninstructed or partly instructed try to practice medicine, or when one treats himself, that the disease is often maltreated, and the corn, instead of being cured or Improved, Is made worse. A corn is not a callosity, although often so called, for the two things are produced in different ways. A collosIty is due to pressure intermittently applied; a corn is due to .more or less constant pressure, combined with friction. A callosity is superficial; a corn is yrell described in its Latin name, clavus, a nail. It Is like a nail driven into the tender tissues of the lower layers of the skin and the parts beneath. Paring a corn, the usual treatment, may give a little relief for a time by relieving the pressure, but soon the horny growth is pushedLabove the surface again, and the condition-Is as bad as ever, or worse. The only lasting benefit Is from the removal of the entire growth, and this is best effected by the application of moisture. Every night the sufferer should go to bed with a thin poultice, or a wad of absorbent cotton saturated with glycerin and water, on the corn, the surface before the application being thickly dusted with bicarbonate of soda. In the daytime an ordinary corn plaster should be worn, and in the hole should be placed a very tjbln layer of absorbent cotton soaked in glycerin. Thiß simple treatment is better than the use of salicylic acid, glacial acetic acid, and other chemicals which are often recommended. Simple rest in bed will do Just as well, but it takes longer. In fact, a good long illness, Buch as typhoid fever, may be depended upon to cure any corn. It is the only good thing to be said of typhoid fever. Of course after the corn has disappeared, better-fitting shoes must be worn, so that none of the prominent parts of the foot are pressed upon and rubbed by the leather at the same time. If the badly-fitting shoe is put on again the corns will quite certainly come back.—Youth’s Companion.