BAD FEET


Many of this sufferers explained to me, that they had suffered with their feet for years or decades and that they had been treated in vain by the greatest specialists. Customers are persuaded to wear shoes which are too small or too large, too narrow or too wide, etc.


THE feet of the civilized are a disgrace. The majority have abnormal or crippled feet. Most feet one sees are anaemic, soft, ill-shaped, and are ornamented with sunken arches, swollen or displaced ankles, enlarged toe joints, bunions, corns and callouses. Worse of all are the toes. In many cases the toes look like a badly made bunch of ill-shape carrots grown on stony soil. The feet of women are worse than those of men. I have seen many elegant women who have driven up to my house in a Rolls Royce, with feet crippled and deformed which would disgrace the poorest charwoman.

Many of this sufferers explained to me, that they had suffered with their feet for years or decades and that they had been treated in vain by the greatest specialists. Some time ago I was visited by the Hon. Mrs. B., a very wealthy woman. She was superbly dressed, wore very elegant shoes and stockings, but complained about her feet. Her toes were crushed and crumpled up. Walking was agony for her. When in Switzerland, she tried to do a little walking, the pain in her toes became atrocious, apparently gangrene set in, and some of the toes had to be amputated.

Dentists and physicians have told us that neglect of the teeth is apt to lead to pyorrhoea which poisons the whole system, and that systemic poisoning from the mouth aggravates every disease or disorder and may produce many of the most serious diseases.

Hence a mania of extracting all teeth has set in. It is perhaps not sufficiently known that serious disorders and diseases of the feet are apt to have a profound influence on the body as a whole. Feet which produce an incessant nagging pain, crippling their owner, are bound to create bad temper, depression, nervousness, faulty posture and in due course degeneration of important organs. The Hon. Mrs. B. had never been able to take proper exercise and she kept an excellent cook, a disastrous combination.

The health of the feet, like that of the teeth, is in the first place a question of nutrition. The foundation of flabby, strengthless feet, of swollen ankles and toe joints, of sunken arches, etc., is well and truly laid in the cradle and in the mothers womb. A diet poor in essential food elements produces weakening of the bones, called rickets, soft teeth, soft joints, soft ligaments, etc.

Dietetic regulation can arrest dental decay, can cure pyorrhoea, and can vastly strengthen weak and useless feet. Further assistance can be given by homoeopathic remedies. Calcarea carbonica, Calcarea phosphorica, Silica and other indicated remedies, given in infinitely small doses, are able to cure that feet and sunken arches, even in people over fifty, especially if combined with a well chosen diet, activation of elimination from the bowel, and a few simple exercises.

Feet which have been weakened by faulty nutrition are injured still further by faultily made footwear. If one looks at the windows of shoe shops one sees a very attractive display of beautifully shaped shoes and boots in tempting colours, but unfortunately the articles of footwear displayed, though attractive to the eye, bear no resemblance to the natural human foot. They have as little resemblance to the natural foot as the lay figures in fashion shops have to the human body.

Tempted by the pretty articles in the window, customers enter the shops and say that they would like to be fitted with a shoe which they had found particularly attractive. The average shop attendant is too wise to offer a comfortable shoe. It would be pronounced ugly. So he hands out some attractive shoes which are pronounced too tight. “But, madam, they are extremely becoming to you, very smart, the latest fashion, they get a little wider in the wear, you will promptly get used to them.” The pretty article squeezes together and crushes the toes, makes walking painful, but the wearer heroically tries to disregard her discomforts.

It is surprising how quickly a foot can be distorted. I have always worn ample and very easy shoes. One day my bootmaker provided me with shoes which caused some discomfort on one of the toes. I was foolish enough to disregard it for two or three days, imagining that the shoe would adapt itself to the foot.

I found, to my amazement, that in few days it had produced something like a hammer toe. It takes months to get rid of a distortion which has been created in a few days or in a few hours. I know men and women who can walk only a few yards owing to the constitutional weakness of their feet and the subsequent distortion produced by the bootmaker.

All boot shops are filled with pretty, attractive and smart footwear. I myself and other people have gone in despair from shot to shop and have not found a single pair of ready-made shoes that would fit. It seems to me that manufacturers make an insufficient number of sizes. That is a most regrettable economy which lead to the universal crippling of feet.

Customers are persuaded to wear shoes which are too small or too large, too narrow or too wide, etc. Most people do not know what foot comfort means. Unfortunately one cannot get comfortable footwear by having shoes made to measure. The art of making shoes to measure has died out. It has been killed by the manufacturers, and the few surviving artisans who make boots and shoes to measure rarely succeed in providing us with what we want.

Some time ago I complained about the position to my friend, Sir Herbert Barker, the famous manipulating surgeon, the highest authority on the disorders of the feet. He has cured tens of thousands of people of their foot troubles. He told me that he had experienced the same difficulty and that, in order to overcome it, he had devised a special shoe made on natural physiological lines and that he had induced Mr. Charles H. Baber, of 303 Regent Street, to manufacture it. I went to the shop in Regent Street but felt very sceptical. During more than half a century I had tried in vain to obtain a ready-made shoe that would fit me.

To my amazement they fitted me in a minute with the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. They enable me to do tramps of thirty miles a day and at the same time they are as comfortable as well-worn slippers. I cannot explain the technicalities of these shoes which, in honour of the inventor, are called “Sir Herbert Barker Shoes.” I only know that there is in that shop a bewildering profusion of models to fit every foot, normal or abnormal. Other people whom I have sent to Barbers have had the same experience.

I know a lady who had spent many hours in trying to discover shoes that would fit her. After wandering from shop to shop in vain, an ingenious shopman suggested to her that possibly boys shoes would answer. He was correct and she had to wear boys shoes and did so reluctantly. One day she went to Babers and in two minutes she had found the shoes of which she had looked in vain for years.

After fitting me with the best shoes I have ever had, a painstaking attendant took me to an X-ray apparatus which clearly showed that the shoes selected were not only comfortable, but were physiologically correct. The normal second toe is a little longer than the big toe. It is so in my feet. Many second toes are pushed in and curled up or converted into hammer toes by shoes which are too short or too narrow, or both. I could clearly see that the shoes were correct not only by the feel, but also by the eye.

I think Sir Herbert Barker has done a work of national importance in devising this new kind of shoes and inducing a firm to produce them. I am sure these shoes must sooner or later become models for all the manufacturers who, I hope, will abandon the present methods of production of insufficient ranges and sizes and of faulty shapes. I think I ought to add that the shoes described are not cheap, but then an ill-fitting shoe is not cheap at any price.

J. Ellis Barker
James Ellis Barker 1870 – 1948 was a Jewish German lay homeopath, born in Cologne in Germany. He settled in Britain to become the editor of The Homeopathic World in 1931 (which he later renamed as Heal Thyself) for sixteen years, and he wrote a great deal about homeopathy during this time.

James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.