Strangely enough, it is as unusual to find a doctor wearing a pair of properly shaped shoes as it is to find a businessman or any type of white collar worker in shoes conducive to foot health. What then can doctors advise their patients concerning the proper kind of footwear for their health and comfort? The answer is very little, for the medical profession, as a whole, knows very little about foot weakness, its causes, its cure, or its close relationship to the kind of shoes we wear. Why?
In most medical schools, and in the practice of medicine generally, foot disorders fall into the domain of the orthopedic surgeon. But the average orthopedic surgeon spends very little of his time with nonoperative foot disorders. Unless a foot is so distorted (by a bunion for instance, a hammer toe, an injury, or a congenital anomaly) that operative intervention is clearly indicated, the orthopedist is usually not too concerned with treating and following the case. His time is taken up with the other aspects of orthopedic surgery and he has little interest in running a foot clinic for curing weak and disabled feet.
In the field of foot weaknesses and disabilities, the only classes that most medical schools provide for their students are given by the department of orthopedics. The limited time devoted to this department in the curriculum is almost always utilized in teaching about the handling of fractures and the other more dramatic aspects of orthopedics. The editor of Clinical Orthopedics, Dr. Anthony S. DePalma, himself a professor of orthopedics in a medical school, stated that "Medical Schools fail almost completely in giving the student a sound grounding and a sane therapeutic concept of foot conditions."
By common consent of patients and the medical profession, non-operative foot problems are referred to chiropodists. Yet it seems that most chiropodists do not know a great deal more about the cause and prevention of "foot trouble" than do the members of the medical profession. Dr. William A. Rossi, a leading chiropodist and an editor of the Boot and Shoe Recorder, stated in the October 1958 issue of the Journal of the American Podiatry Association: "Absence of scientific standards are the missing links in fields of foot health and footwear. Physicians, orthopedists, chiropodists, shoe fitters, shoe manufacturers, all have individualized approaches to foot health, with the result that no one knows what is a 'normal foot,' a 'good shoe,' or how to evaluate a foot."