question: How did medieval era people cut their toenails when there were no nail-cutters?
comment: People used knives to "peel" their nails shorter. Or just let them break from physical labour.
passages: Iron mallets that could be employed "ad hoc" to shatter the bones of the fingers and toes were standard equipment in medieval European torture chambers. Toes were also torn from the feet with iron pincers or had their nails slowly extracted with forceps or, with remarkable cruelty, by slowly hammering sharp, thin iron wedges under the toenails.
   Prior to the invention of the modern nail clipper, people would use small knives to trim or pare their nails. Descriptions of nail trimming in literature date as far back as the 8th century BC. The Book of Deuteronomy exhorts in 21:12 that a man, should he wish to take a captive as a wife, "shall bring her home to [his] house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails". A reference is made in Horace's "Epistles", written circa 20 BC, to "A close-shaven man, it's said, in an empty barber's booth, penknife in hand, quietly cleaning his nails."
   The girl's broken feet required a great deal of care and attention, and they would be unbound regularly. Each time the feet were unbound, they were washed, the toes carefully checked for injury, and the nails carefully and meticulously trimmed. When unbound, the broken feet were also kneaded to soften them and the soles of the girl's feet were often beaten to make the joints and broken bones more flexible. The feet were also soaked in a concoction that caused any necrotic flesh to fall off.
   Another cruel variant involved using rough skewers of wood or bone dipped in boiling sulfur. A number of such skewers were slowly driven into the flesh under the prisoner's toenails. Alternately, the skewer was dipped in boiling oil, which served a dual purpose of both burning the incredibly sensitive flesh and lubricating the needle so that the torturer could freely explore a wide surface area beneath the toenail. When enough skewers had been driven home to pry each nail loose from its bed, the nail was torn out at the root with a pair of pliers. This was a favorite technique of torture in the German witch-hunter's arsenal, being extremely inexpensive, portable, and easy to inflict. It is also recorded that, in more recent times—particularly, during the Armenian genocide of the 1910s—phonograph needles were driven under fingernails and toenails to torture the prisoner before his nails were torn out with pliers.
   However, there are indications they were worn as early as the 1360s. The author of the "Eulogium Historiarum" describes men of this period as wearing "points on their shoes as long as your finger that are called crakowes; more suitable as claws... for demons than as ornaments for men."
   First, each foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood; this was intended to soften the foot and aid the binding. Then, the toenails were cut back as far as possible to prevent in-growth and subsequent infections, since the toes were to be pressed tightly into the sole of the foot. Cotton bandages, 3 m long and 5 cm wide (10 ft by 2 in), were prepared by soaking them in the blood and herb mixture. To enable the size of the feet to be reduced, the toes on each foot were curled under, then pressed with great force downwards and squeezed into the sole of the foot until the toes broke.
   People have been pedicuring their nails for more than 4,000 years. In southern Babylonia, noblemen used solid gold tools to give themselves manicures and pedicures. The use of fingernail polish can be traced back even further. Originating in China in 3000 BC, nail color indicated one’s social status, according to a Ming Dynasty manuscript; royal fingernails were painted black and red. Ancient Egyptians have been manicuring all the way back to 2300 BC.
   Nailmakers would purchase their iron from the nailmasters and sell their nails to nailmasters at set prices, effectively at a piece-rate. The basic technique of nail production did not change much, involving in essence heating iron rods, making a point, half cutting the nail off, fully cutting it and hammering a head. Simple nails might take a few blows and take a matter of seconds to make, while complex nails could involve twelve to twenty blows. Both men and women made nails, men making the more complex nails requiring greater physical effort, and women producing the simpler, smaller nails. 
   "His behavior was not at all times so exemplary, for Mr. Gunn relates that the Highland gentry occasionally found it necessary to repress his turbulence by clipping his nails; thereby “putting him out of business” for a time."
   The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was known for extremely long nails. Sometimes these nails were protected by gold and jewel-encrusted nail guards. Servants performed personal chores for the royals so their nails did not break or become damaged. Empress Dowager Cixi of China, who ruled from 1835 to 1908, was known for her outrageous nails. There are many photos showing the empress with 6-inch-long gold guards protecting her long nails. All of the aforementioned did not use nail art as it is widely known today, only stained, dyed, or dusted the finger and toenails. First actual record of nail art was from the short-lived Inca Empire (1438-1533), which at that time was one of the largest empires in South America. Incas would decorate their nails by painting eagles on them. In 1770 the first fancy gold and silver manicure sets were created. French King Louis XVI who ruled from 1774 until his deposition in 1792, always had his nails taken care of using these sets.
   A depiction of early manicures and pedicures was found on a carving from a pharaoh’s tomb, and the Egyptians were known for paying special attention to their feet and legs. The Egyptians also colored their nails, using red to show the highest social class. It is said that Cleopatra’s nails were painted a deep red, whereas Queen Nefertiti went with a flashier ruby shade. In ancient Egypt and Rome, military commanders also painted their nails to match their lips before they went off to battle.
  
  Section::::Pedicures in the United States.
   The production of wrought-iron nails continued well into the 19th century, but ultimately was reduced to nails for purposes for which the softer cut nails were unsuitable, including horseshoe nails.
  
  Section::::History.:Cut.
   Although there is no archaeological or medieval iconographic evidence to support the idea that the toes were ever tied up to the leg, as noted earlier, there is direct literary evidence dating from 1394 which states that this was the practice at the time these shoes were introduced into England. Additionally, the practice is mentioned by the antiquarian John Stow in his 1698 publication "A Survey of London", where he wrote:
   Angelique Merasty was one of the last practicing birch-biters recorded in North America during her time. She passed her teachings on to a woman named Angelique Merasty Levac, who lives in Manitoba. She is known for reviving the art or birch-bark biting, and there is now an estimate of 12 known people who continue this tradition in North America.
   In York, Pennsylvania, the same fundraising method was used with the opposite meaning: people paid 10 cents to drive a nail into the head of a statue of the kaiser with a red, white and blue handled hammer.
  
  Section::::Modern nailing.
  
  Florian Dering, a museologist at the Munich Stadtmuseum, describes a nailing game called Nagelbalken, which became popular after World War I in German-speaking countries and is still used to raise money for charity as well as at weddings, for the newlyweds to display their skills to those present.
  
  Section::::Sources.
   The slitting mill, introduced to England in 1590, simplified the production of nail rods, but the real first efforts to mechanise the nail-making process itself occurred between 1790 and 1820, initially in the United States and England, when various machines were invented to automate and speed up the process of making nails from bars of wrought iron. Also in Sweden in the early 1700s Christopher Polhem produced a nail cutting machine as part of his automated factory. These nails were known as "cut nails" or "square nails" because of their roughly rectangular cross section. Cut nails were one of the important factors in the increase in balloon framing beginning in the 1830s and thus the decline of timber framing with wooden joints. Though still used for historical renovations, and for heavy-duty applications, such as attaching boards to masonry walls, "cut nails" are much less common today than "wire nails".
   One of the most common artifacts found in the French colonial site of Fort St. Pierre are hand wrought nails. Different types of nails were found at this site with the most common being the Rose Head nail, the “L” Head, “T” Head, as well as tacks. Hand-wrought nails have different uses and are applied in different scenarios for distinctive materials. For example, the Rose Head was more commonly used for practical uses while the “L” Head nail was used for furniture. By studying these artifacts, we can better understand the different uses for nails in this French Colonial space.
   Section::::History.
   Grew & Neergaard summise that a similar method was used in medieval times, in part from an illustration in the Mendel Housebook. A workman is shown using a small hand adze for finishing pattens with drawknives (or possibly stock knives) hanging on the wall behind.
   Wooden dowels have been used in manufacturing and woodworking for many centuries. One of the earliest documented uses of wooden dowels was in Japanese shrines in AD 690, which were constructed using only wood, wooden dowels and pegs, and interlocking joints. Around AD 1000, Leif Erikson sailed across the North Atlantic in a ship that was largely constructed of overlapping planks held together by wooden dowels and iron nails. The wooden dowels did not rust and thus were more reliable than iron for long expeditions.
  
  Section::::Metal dowel.
  
  Section::::Metal dowel.:In machinery.
   BULLET::::- Ruthanne Lum McCunn wrote a biographical novel "A Thousand Pieces of Gold" (1981, adapted into a 1991 film), about Polly Bemis, a Chinese American pioneer woman. It describes her feet being bound, and later unbound, when she needed to help her family with farm labour.
  
  BULLET::::- Emily Prager's short story "A Visit from the Footbinder", from her collection of short stories of the same name (1982), describes the last few hours of a young Chinese girl's childhood before the professional footbinder arrives to initiate her into the adult woman's life of beauty and pain.
   Some women with bound feet might not have been able to walk without the support of their shoes and thus would have been severely limited in their mobility. However, many women with bound feet were still able to walk and work in the fields, albeit with greater limitations than their non-bound counterparts. In the 19th and early 20th century, dancers with bound feet were popular, as were circus performers who stood on prancing or running horses. Women with bound feet in one village in Yunnan Province even formed a regional dance troupe to perform for tourists in the late 20th century, though age has since forced the group to retire. In other areas, women in their 70s and 80s could be found providing limited assistance to the workers in the rice fields well into the 21st century.
   Archaeological evidence in the form of surviving shoe soles shows that the length of the point beyond the toes of the foot was rarely, if ever, more than 50% of the length of the foot. This is consistent with depictions of highly fashionable European men from the third quarter of the 15th century when poulaine toes were at the height of their popularity.
   The seasoned wood was sold on to the master clogger who would finish the work on the now dry, seasoned wood. The same stock knives were used for shaping with two more pivot knives, the hollower and the gripper bit. The latter is used to cut the rebate to hold the upper. The final operation is to finish the sole perfectly smooth by rasps and short bladed knives.
   It is likely that, like the "Iron maiden of Nuremberg," or "Eiserne Jungfrau", the instep borer is more reflective of myth than of reality. The only standard source that mentions it , which the Library of Congress attributes to Richard Sair--even though that author's name appears nowhere on the work--claims to be based upon the Earl of Shrewsbury's exhibit of devices from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg that traveled the world after 1890. Yet, the catalogue that fully annotates the earl's collection of more than one thousand pieces--including dozens of "feet squeezers [and] iron boots" that variously and ingeniously tortured the foot and leg with screws, cranks, wedges, burs, spikes, teeth, red-hot coals, fire, "etc."--makes no mention whatsoever of the instep borer.
  
presuppositions: Medieval era people always cut their toenails. Nail-cutters are required to cut toenails.
corrections: Some medieval era people let their toenails break from physical labour. Knives can be used to cut toenails.
raw_presuppositions: Medieval era people always cut their toenails. Nail-cutters are required to cut toenails.
raw_corrections: Some medieval era people let their toenails break from physical labour. Knives can be used to cut toenails.