Following in the footsteps of the noble chiropodist Dr. Simon J. Wikler, James decided to jump in with both feet and get a toehold by constantly questioning the cobbled-up approaches that well-heeled researchers have stood behind for over a century. Practically running on empty with his narrow, shoestring budget, James stumbled his way down years of dead-end paths in controlling his own diseases by using the same head-over-heels methods of modern practitioners, but always getting back on his feet and putting his best foot forward. Naturally, such repeated failures had James questioning the boots he was trying to fill.
Nonetheless, after cooling his heels, he gathered up notes and observations of his past experiences and then stepped right up to the challenge by getting his feet wet in a few sure-footed subject areas. After a good grounding in some basic human anatomy, it occurred to James that the body is a single mechanical structure, composed of bones and muscles connected in such a way that change in one part necessarily produces change in another part. The body's internal functioning, thought James, must surely depend upon the habitual arrangement and use of those bones and muscles, and rather than treating symptoms as separate, he should consider them simultaneously as bound together. Was he, at last, getting off on the right foot?
Still totally oblivious to the effects of shoes, James pounded the pavement in search of any novel research regarding the essentials of body mechanics in health and disease, but he found nothing amongst the voluminous drug- and diet-based journals. Keeping in step with his belief that the older works stand out as the best, James decided to foot the bill and purchase a rare book, originally published in the 1930's by the distinguished orthopedist Dr. Joel E. Goldthwait, that clearly demonstrated the influence of posture on cardiovascular disease, pulmonary problems, visceral disturbances, neurological disorders, musculoskeletal pain, arthritis, and many other human conditions.
Now hot on the heels of a monumental medical discovery, James fell upon a key article, written by the famous footwear historian and podiatrist Dr. William A. Rossi, explaining why shoes make a natural gait impossible, and coupled with the insightful observations made by Dr. Wikler and Dr. Goldthwait, the final pieces to age-old puzzles came together quickly. Thinking on his feet, James soon fit many chronic illnesses, with an unknown cause, to an everyday item that everyone across the United States now uses habitually from birth. Realizing that the shoes make the man, he wasted no time in ordering a pair of custom-fit, soft-soled leather moccasins. After walking a mile in his new shoes, James was literally dancing on air, while thinking about Dr. Wikler's groundbreaking discovery of the 1950's that explained why your feet are killing you.
Some believe that James is stepping out on a limb in tying our common diseases solely to a common mechanical item. Yet, he believes that—although it has merely scratched the surface—the website will put everyone on an equal footing, allowing each person to determine whether the shoe fits or gives them fits. Stand on your own two feet, take it step by step, think outside of the shoebox, and arrive at your own conclusions, says the footloose and fancy-free James. After all, he points out, only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.
Most people want to die with their boots on, but James is putting his foot down. You can bet your boots that this loafer is not in his shoes anymore. :-)
But during the 1940's, Dr. Wikler—a foot doctor—realized that common internal cancers might not be dietary deficiency diseases after all. (1) Astutely noting an absence of breast and prostate cancers where there was an absence of shoes, even in places with poor nutrition, Dr. Wikler proposed that degenerative diseases arise from the postural stress of weak feet forced to spend life bound and disabled. He discovered that all parts of the body, from head to toes and fingers, are susceptible to footwear, resulting in a wide variety of conditions affecting the minds and actions of both young and old. "Take off your shoes and walk", advised the insightful Dr. Wikler. (9)
The unfruitful adage of the last century is in dire need of correction. In realizing a world without disease, and thus one without doctors, we must begin at the foundation and remove the cause. Indeed, baring the feet will see the doctors retreat.
"There are two ways of detecting something that no one has yet seen: one is to aim at the finest detail by getting as close as possible with the best available analyzing instruments; the other is merely to look at things from a new angle where they show hitherto unexposed facets. The former requires money and experience; the latter presupposes neither; indeed, it is actually aided by simplicity, the lack of prejudice, and the absence of those established habits of thinking which tend to come after long years of work. The general adaptation syndrome could have been discovered during the Middle Ages, if not earlier; its recognition did not depend upon the development of any complicated pieces of apparatus, new techniques of observation, nor even upon much training, ingenuity, or intelligence, as far as that goes, but merely upon an unbiased state of mind, a fresh point of view."