Ill-Health from High Heels by Thomas H. S. Pullen, M. D.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1883

Ill-Health from High Heels.

By Thomas H. S. Pullen, M. D.

WILL you kindly let me say a few words on the consequences of the present fashion of high-heeled boots and shoes, and especially of the unnatural situation of the fashionable heel?

I have at present under my care two serious cases of "sprained ankle," arising solely from their use. The parties tripped, and, losing their balance, were unable to recover themselves without falling, which in the one resulted in partial laceration of the internal, and in the other of the external ligaments of the ankle-joint, and both threatened to end in permanent partial disability.

Again, about a month since, I was consulted respecting a young lady, aged sixteen, whose parents were greatly alarmed at a supposed spinal affection, under which they believed their daughter to be suffering. After an ordinary walk, but more especially after ascending the hills in the locality, she experienced a distressing feeling of nausea, and an amount of pain and heat over the dorsal and lumbar regions, extending, more or less, through the whole lower extremities, and followed by an amount of painful weariness that wholly disabled her for days after, the more muscular parts being painful on pressure. My professional knowledge of both parents and child guided my diagnosis and prognosis of the case. That the spine was all right, and the means of cure simple, I felt no doubt. I ordered the boots she generally wore to be brought to me, and found the heels raised two inches, tapering to the size of a shilling, and, to make matters worse, instead of corresponding to the situation of the natural heel, they were situated immediately under the arch of the foot. I recommended rest in the horizontal position for two or three days, and shoes with half-inch soles, of the breadth of the natural heel, and the toes broad in proportion, to be substituted for those previously worn.

The cure was complete. No nausea, no weariness no pain or discomfort after a four-mile walk, have been experienced since.

In walking under the previous condition every intention of nature—anatomically speaking—was frustrated, and the symptoms complained of precisely those to be expected. Not only were the firmness of step and ease in walking lost, through the natural spring and muscular action of the foot being destroyed, but every muscle whose tendon extended to the foot must have been abnormally strained, the upright position of the body preserved under difficulties, and the center of gravity and adjacent nerve centers seriously irritated—a state of things which, I need not tell my professional brethren, if perpetuated from youth to womanhood, must inevitably end in permanent mischief of some kind; and the sooner the voice of the profession is raised against such an absurd and pernicious practice, the better.

It certainly does not redound to the credit of our good sense or intelligence to see introduced or patronized what became a term of reproach to our ancestors a century since.—Thomas H. S. Pullen, M. D., in London Lancet.