In addition to the ordinary hard and soft varieties, _black_ and _bleeding_ corns are described by one writer on the subject, some of which are reported very difficult to cure and dangerous to manage; their injudicious removal being liable to result in convulsions, and even lockjaw and death; all of which frightful consequences may be accepted as inducements to avoid the productive first causes of the trouble. In regard to the treatment of _bunions_, the following from the “Hydropathic Encyclopædia,” is the only thing we are able to find in the books. “This affliction, though generally regarded as a kind of corn, is really an inflammation and swelling of the _bursa mucosa_,[8] at the inside of the ball of the great toe; it often produces a distortion of the metatarsal joint of the great toe, and is produced by the same causes as corns. The treatment is, warm foot-baths when the part is very tender and irritable; at other times frequent cold baths; and when a horny substance, resembling a corn, appears externally, the application of caustic. I have known bad corns and bunions cease to be troublesome after the patient had been a few months under hydropathic treatment for other complaints.” The straightening of the great toe in the manner previously described will probably do more toward the relief and cure of bunions than any other remedy. The material of a shoe for that purpose should, of course, be soft—the softest kinds of calfskin are good—but not of _too_ yielding a nature, or the toe and joint will force it into their own abnormal shape in spite of the form of the shoe, unless this can be prevented by a stiffening piece of sole-leather at the ball (see Chapter Four), because the parts tend to assume their old position, and do so, as far as the leather will allow. With the ordinary shoe, all that can be done, is to give the foot the softest of leather—buck-skin, when obtainable, is the best—and make the shoe over a last having also a big joint upon it, made of sole-leather, in the exact place to fit that of the foot, and thus allow it plenty of room. The callosities that come upon the heel, instep, or other part of the foot, can almost always be lifted or scraped off, without the necessity of using caustic, and there is less probability of their re-appearing after the cause is removed than in the case of corns. But if the pressure that caused them first is continued, of course they grow again. When they are so bad as to make it difficult to remove them without softening, they can be subjected to the same treatment which softens corns. Sore insteps, big joints, and corns, when no positive means are adopted for their cure or removal, may often be made tolerably comfortable by having the shoe carefully adapted to fit them. This is done by making leather corns or joints on the lasts before the shoes are made. Particular places in a shoe can also, generally, be stretched, so as to render them much more easy.[9]