Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 217, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1917 — MAY BE CLUB-FOOTED RACE [ARTICLE]

MAY BE CLUB-FOOTED RACE

Humanity Said to Be Tending Toward a Condition by No Means to f Be Desired.* 1 That the human race is slowly evolving toward a condition of clubfootedness is suggested by Dr. Truman Abbe of Washington in the Medical Record. Doctor Abbe points to the horse’s hoof and Its evolution from the five-toed foot of the prehistoric horses, by the dropping of one toe after another and the consolidation of the bones from the knee down. “When we look at the human skeleton and eompare the bone of the tibia and fibula and the digits beyond each of them,” he continues, “It does not take much lmaginafton to see suggested In the slender fibula and the diminutive little toes an early stage In the reduction process, which If carried further would lead to a diminution of the number of toes on man’s foot.” And he closes his article with these words: “We come thus to the suggestion of club-foot as a tendency toward the dropping of the post-axial digit group of the lower limb. And this dropping of a digit grout) would seem to be due to restricted development In the central nervous a factor that has been at work since before the days of the five-toed horse.”