When the Shoe Fits, You’re Happy
You
know this story:
The
soldiers ask Cinderella to try on the shoe. Much to the resistance of her stepmother,
Cinderella puts it on her foot; it fits her perfectly. She shows the soldiers
the other shoe. It is a matching pair. The Prince is so happy to find Cinderella,
he marries her and the two live happily ever after.
We all know how happy we
are when we have a good-fitting pair of shoes, but what is our size? How do we know?
King Edward II of
England declared the barleycorn as the basis for shoe measurement. He ruled
that the length of three barleycorns were equivalent to one inch, making this
the standard for sizing. Got that? I know. What is a barleycorn? Someone came
up with a better way to measure feet.
It is simply
known as The Brannock Device, the standard foot measuring tool for the world's
footwear industry. But few people can call it by name, much less identify its
inventor, Charles Brannock.
As a student at
Syracuse University Brannock wanted to find the best way to measure the foot.
He played around with the idea for a couple of years and finally built a prototype.
How? He used an Erector set. In 1927, Brannock patented the device and created
a company to build it. Over one million have been sold. The same year, a patent
was approved for a different device to help ensure your wingtips, pumps or
Buster Browns fit exactly right.
The machines
were four feet high and made of metal covered in wood. At the bottom was an
opening ledge where an adult or child could place his or her feet. At the top
of the machine were three viewing portholes. An estimated 16,000 machines were
sold. Devices like this one were common in shoe stores around the world for
decades.
I was just a
kid. Still, Uncle Johnny (See later post) warned me about radiation from our
television set. How safe was this gizmo? And the shoe salesman did not strike
me as “Mr. Wizard” but more like an Al Bundy. What did he know? I did not like
using the machine when Mom took me shoe shopping.
From the 1920s
through the 1950s, the machines made their way into shoe stores in the United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, and Switzerland.
They were used to provide parents with the assurance that their child's shoes would
fit exactly right.
Children were
instructed to wiggle their toes to demonstrate how much room there was inside
the shoe. Both the bones of the feet and the outline of the shoe were clearly
visible.
The atomic bombs
blasts at the end of WW II shed a new light (literally) on anything irradiating
and in the following two years these machines were shown to be an ineffective
means of fitting shoes, but more importantly, a health risk. During a 20-second
viewing time, American-made machines delivered about thirteen roentgens of
exposure. (British Pedoscopes were less powerful.) Although the beam of
radiation was directed at the feet, a large amount would scatter in all
directions. Consequently, a shoe salesmen received a whole-body dose of
radiation, as did anyone else standing near the machines. A salesman standing by
the machine for only two hours received a year’s worth of natural radiation
exposure.
There are
records of shoe salesmen suffering radiation burns requiring amputation in
1950, a case of dermatitis with ulceration in 1957, and a diagnosis of basal
cell carcinoma in 2004. It is likely that many more salesmen were affected.
According to a report in the Wisconsin Medical Journal, the machines may have
led to a high incidence of foot cancer.
The machines were
banned in most states by 1970. Due to the lack of records, however, there is no
way to correlate cancers that arise many years later to those who were exposed
to radiation by the shoe-fitting Foot-O-Scope.
Today, while
radiation is not used casually but in treating cancer and in medical testing, I
always remember a good friend and our family attorney whose thyroid was
effectively destroyed because of it. The doctor used it to treat his acne.
In general, the
cancer risk from a single medical test or procedure is low, but the
skyrocketing growth in the use of CT scans — from eight million in 1990 to over
sixty-two million today — suggests that medical imaging may be adding to the
cancer burden. A report from the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia
University Medical Center estimated that radiation from CT scans now accounts
for 1.5% of all cancers in the United States.
Most tests for
heart disease, for example, are important, even necessary. A stress test using
thallium or technetium can tell how the heart functions when it needs to work
harder. (Done that). Some tests, though, may not be worth the radiation
received. The value of coronary calcium scans and cardiac CT scans has not yet
been established, especially when they are used for healthy people "just
to see" what shape the heart's arteries are in. (This might have been my
trip to Heart Check America.)
You would never
agree to (non-cosmetic) surgery unless you need it. Right? A similar principle
should apply to medical testing that involves radiation. Agree to it when the
test will give you and your doctor valuable information about your health or
your body. And even then, see if it is possible to get the lowest dose of
radiation possible.
Age is a crucial
factor. It usually takes 10 to 20 years before DNA damaged by a low dose of
radiation leads to cancer. The older you are, then, the lower the chances that
radiation poses a threat. On the other hand, the hazards of radiation for kids
and young adults are higher.
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