(2.49)

In this section we’ll look at the foot. As usual, we’ll start with the bones. After that we’ll look at the joints and ligaments, the muscles, the blood vessels and nerves, and lastly the skin.

We saw most of the bones of the foot in the last section. Here, we'll briefly review the tarsal bones, then we'll look at the metatarsals and the bones of the toes.

Here’s the calcaneus, the talus, the navicular, the cuneiforms - first, second, and third - and the cuboid. Let’s see the same bones again from beneath: the calcaneus, the cuboid, the cuneiforms, the navicular, and the talus again.

Now we’ll look at the metatarsals. Like the toes, the metatarsals are numbered one, through five. The first metatarsal is more massive than the others. The second metatarsal is the longest. On the base of the fifth metatarsal there’s a prominent tubercle.

The metatarsals are slightly curved from end to end. The heads of the metatarsals lie in one flat plane, but their bases form an arch from side to side, as do the tarsal bones that they articulate with. These are the three cuneiform bones, and the cuboid. These are the tarsometatarsal joints. There’s very little movement at any of them.

The bones of the foot are arched in two planes, from side to side as we’ve just seen, and also from end to end. We’ll be looking at the structures that support the arches of the foot in a minute. To finish with the dry bones, let’s look at the toes.

The big toe has only two phalanges, a proximal, and a distal. The other four toes have three phalanges, proximal, middle, and distal. These are the metatarso-phalangeal joints, or MP joints for short. The joints between the phalanges are the interphalangeal joints.

The bones of the toes are quite similar to the corresponding bones of the fingers, which are shown in Volume 1 of this atlas.