Feet

(written in 2017 but never posted then)

A sort of life story (from the ankle down)

I never thought I would end up as a podiatrist (old title: chiropodist) and a sometime writer of podiatry textbooks. It’s funny how life turns out.

I had a career mapped out in my head from early on in life. Had it been a secular career I would probably have gone for an English degree and become an archivist or librarian. The idea of research never left me, but became an amateur hobby instead. It probably meant I never got disenchanted as sometimes happens when a hobby turns into work.

But I chose instead to spend my life working for nothing for a religious charity. As it happens, that still worked out, but when I suddenly found myself pushing a pram many years down the line, plans to work abroad and travel disappeared somewhat dramatically and it was necessarily to earn real money to pay real bills.

I could have chosen accountancy, and in fact started a course. My father started his career as an accountant, but then a chance encounter with someone in the same sort of boat sent me into the wonderful world of FEET.

My research skills, such as they were, came in handy, when it came to supplementing course work and practical work, and shortly after I was let loose on the unsuspecting feet of the Welsh nation I started writing.

I mugged up on the wonderful world of fringe podiatry. For instance, there was (and still is) homeopathic podiatry. There was an excitable man whose descendants still promote the concept of using tincture of calendula in treatments (that’s heavily watered-down juice squeezed from marigold plants to you). The theory is that different genus of marigold can, on the one hand, promote healthy granulation and on the other can chemically enucleate helomas (in normal-speak, that’s burn out corns to you). If you are unsure of the concepts, they are diametrically opposite. There was an article in a now defunct journal that I sometimes wrote for, where hilariously he got the captions transposed on the grainy photographs. The worst case scenario from this was that - assuming the treatment had any validity - someone’s corns and callosities would grow to enormous size in one case, or you’d burn a nasty hole in your foot in the other. To the great amusement of skeptics, there was a frantic addenda sent out at considerable cost to subscribers.

Anyhow, I mugged up for another publication and did an article on homeopathic chiropody, even though I didn’t really believe in it. The result was that the person who unwittingly directed me into podiatry became a homeopathic doctor later in life. Yes, it’s strange how things turn out.

Then there was reflexology, a spin on an American pseudo-science called Zone Therapy. It was a bit too Ying and Yang for my liking, but if you left out the patter it made people feel good and feel relaxed and in some conditions with the elderly and terminally ill, that could ONLY BE GOOD THING. I mugged up and did an article on that too. I learned how to write “neutrally” at such times.

Then I wrote a history of the profession - warts and all. It started life as a podiatry seminar lecture. That sold extremely well, although it would need a considerable update for a modern audience, since in the UK chiropody has finally followed the American pattern and become podiatry, and protection of title has finally been achieved through legislation. Believe it or not, in the UK horses hoofs were protected by the Farriers Act of 1974, lower orders like humans had to wait until 2004.

But it probably sold because it tried to be humorous and sarcastic and was filled with cartoons - not what you normally found in traditional po-faced podiatry literature. Quite recently I got hold of a mammoth doctorial thesis on podiatric history and was gratified to find my humble work frequently referenced. How on earth could something like treating feet be humorous? Well, people like to feel elevated, and podiatry in Britain is no exception. Since 2004 new entrants to the profession need a first class BSc Honors degree to have the title, so they spend several years at Uni, get a mountain of debt for the next few decades, only to find that most of their working life is just cutting old ladies’ toenails. That’s assuming anyone will employ them. So they are forced into private practice and often fail because they lack people skills or business skills, while the older breed continues to make a killing. There was a lot of mileage in that story.

So the book covered attempts in the past to reach this elevated position, and all the shysters and chancers who sold trash courses when the titles were not protected. And how the profession started, with a London inn-keeper who coined the term “chiropodist” when he cut corns as a sideline to selling beer.

And then how the first corn cutters worked with the barbers - hair at one end and feet at the other. Actually, a hobby horse of mine, chiropody/podiatry in its British incarnation should have been a craft like hairdressing. A manual skill, supplemented by a knowledge of science - I mean if you put the wrong things on someone’s hair it can turn green or fall out - but a craft. But oh no - the powers that be decided that really they were “doctors” - well, from the ankle down. The American model moved into proper surgery and took over what in the UK would normally be handled by orthopaedic surgeons, so this isn’t a swipe at them; they have is a different story. But UK chiropody history has been a battlefield. Even today, with legislation and the like, it is still represented by four different associations who basically all hate each other, and will stick the scalpel in at a moment’s notice.

I also wrote a book on how to run a domiciliary practice. The plusses are very few overheads. The minuses are the limitations on what you can do outside a surgery and the need for special aseptic procedures for sterilization (sterilization of instruments that is). But it covered all sorts of things, like how to take case histories. People can be very vague about their medication - either because they just don’t know and don’t want to know, or because they are desperate for a treatment that might be denied in a particular environment. I remember one patient who insisted they were not diabetic or on anti-coagulants, but after I had done the deed I noticed a green card on the shelf - a hit-panic-button emergency card for someone with von Willebrand disease. That’s akin to haemophilia to you. I remember contacting the relatives and as we say in the UK wiping the floor with them.

It covered safety for female practitioners. (Tabloid newspaper headline - “but I stabbed him with a STERILE blade says chiropodist...”) And the business side of accounting without employing an overrated and expensive accountant - as long as you coped with basic numeracy to start with.

The books are long out of print, and impossibly dated, but I earned encouraging four figure sums from both of them in their time. 

And I have happily cut old ladies’ toenails, plus a few more advanced procedures on occasion, for the whole of my career. It has allowed me to still pursue my other vocation, while putting a roof over the family’s head. And I have seen off the competition time and again because I probably mastered certain people skills in another environment that helped me keep people sort of happy.

Just as long as they are not limping after I have gone...

But no, I never imagined things would have worked out like this when I first left school.

As I started off this ramble - it’s funny how life turns out.