There is no doubt but that the deformities caused by shoes are often very great, and Sir William Flower sums up the matter in the following sentences:--"The English mother or nurse who thrusts the tender feet of a young child into stiff, unyielding, pointed shoes or boots, often regardless of the essential difference in form of right and left at a time when freedom is especially needed for their proper growth and development, is the exact counterpart of the Chinook Indian woman, applying her bandages and boards to the opposite end of her baby's body, only with considerably less excuse; for a distorted head apparently less affects health and comfort than cramped and misshapen feet, and was also esteemed of more vital importance to preferment in Chinook society. Any one who recollects the boots of the late Lord Palmerston will be reminded that a wide expanse of shoe leather is in this country, even during the prevalence of an opposite fashion, quite compatible with the attainment of the highest political and social eminence."[58] After all, it is generally what our eyes are accustomed to that we consider to be right and fitting. The broad-toed shoes that were adopted in the reign of Henry VIII look clumsy to us; but so did the pneumatic tyres of bicycles after we had got used to the look of the narrow solid ones. It is not so much the wearing of boots of course, but the kind of boots that has to be considered. The high heels of shoes add to the evil effects of the pointed toes, and a copy of a drawing from an advertisement figured by Sir William Flower recalls strongly the stunted foot of a Chinese woman which the wearer of the shoe would be one of the first probably to anathematize. This brings us to the malformation which has been caused through many centuries in a country that can claim a good deal of civilization, and is produced by special bandages after a long and very painful course of treatment. There is very little evidence of alteration in the form of the head having been practised in this country, though one or two skulls have been found, and there is a tradition that the custom prevailed not very long ago in Norfolk. In France, however, it was well known until recent years, and even it may not have now become extinct. There are plenty of records in the works of early writers with regard to the practice, and some of the North-American Indians still follow the fashion of their fathers. The Chinook Indians flatten the skull between boards so that they get the name of Flat-heads, and other tribes produce an elongated skull by constructing bandages of deer hide. Deformation of the head seems to have little effect on the free-living American Indians, but the same statement does not hold good among Europeans. According to the reports of French physicians, they have traced all kinds of troubles to the practice.