History
The name derives from American orthopedic surgeon Dudley Joy Morton (1884–1960), who originally described it as part of Morton's triad (a.k.a. Morton's syndrome or Morton's foot syndrome): a congenital short first metatarsal bone, a hypermobile first metatarsal segment, and calluses under the second and third metatarsals.
Although commonly described as a disorder, it is sufficiently common to be considered a normal variant of foot shape (its prevalence varies with different populations). The main symptom experienced due to Morton's toe is discomfort and callusing of the second metatarsal head. This is because the first metatarsal head would normally bear the majority of a person's body weight during the propulsive phases of gait, but these forces are transferred to the second (smaller) metatarsal head because of its anterior positioning. In shoe-wearing cultures, it can be problematic. For instance, it may cause nail problems from wearing shoes with a profile that does not accommodate the longer second toe.
Confusion has arisen from the term also sometimes being used for a different condition, Morton's neuroma, a term coined by Thomas George Morton (1835–1903) for a syndrome involving pain caused by neuroma between the third and fourth toes.
Read more about this topic: Morton's Toe
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)