STRANGE DEVICES

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 159, 8 July 1938, Page 12

STRANGE DEVICES

JN the University of Rochester’s Medical School is a gait laboratory, says the New York Times. Here reigns, Dr. R Plato Schwartz, whose main interest in life is feet in motion—horse’s feet, dog’s feet, but chiefly human feet. To him legs and feet are machines, which, like other machines, can be and should be studied in the minutest detail, not just in rest, but in action. The Rockefeller Foundation supplied the money to conduct Dr. Schwartz’s early .osearches. A Rochester shoe manufacturer later contributed £30,000.

"I wanted an instrument which would do for the foot what the electrocardigraph does for the human heart.” says Dr. Schwartz. “Something which would both indicate how we walk and which would record the part that each little bone plays. Something which would make a record that could be studied.” In Dr. Schwartz’s gait laboratory in the University of Rochester you will see an elevated platform 50 feet long, 4.5 feet high, 5 feet wide. On the platform is a continuous sheet of metal. Dr. Schwartz begins by attaching metal disc touches the metal floor Ltrip there inside inner edges of your shoes. Wires run from the discs to a recording device. You walk. Every time a metal disc touches the metal floor stirp there is an electric contact. A continuous record of electrical footprints is made, successive patterns of lines which bear rtc resemblance to -eal footprints but which show to the thousandth of a secohd how heel, toe. and arch perform their functions, how long each pressed down, how muscles and ligaments were normally or abnormally strained and stressed.

Simultaneously a camera makes a motion picture. There are from 60 t 6 110 exposures a second. Project the film at the regular speed of 12 to 16 a second and you see yourself walking in “slow motion.”

Man’s Walk “Measured”

The motion-picture camera and bright flood lights travel along on a track and keep pace with you as you walk. The electric footprints of the electrobasograph record and the mo-tion-picture record make it possible to follow the foot’s intricate motion and to note wobbles and actions that escape even the trained eye. Orthopedic surgeons have long known in a general way how we walk. They have known, for example, that the foot consists roughly of a heel, midfoot, and toe, that the weight is borne chiefly by heel and midfoot, the primary business of the toe is to propel the body forward. But they did not know', until the electrobasograph was designed and used, that when we put a heel down it stays down for about 0.4 of a second, that about 0.15 of a second after it touches the ground the midfoot begins to roll for 0.2 of a second. Just as we rise to our highest on our big toe, down comes the heel of the other foot. The electrical footprints and the slew-motion picture leave no doubt that bones, ligaments, muscles of the foot and leg constitute a mechanical system. If the bones are made to press down in the wrong way by a badly designed shoe, ligaments and muscles are called upon to perform unnatural functions. Result: discomfort, unnecessary effort, abnormal action of the foot, pain. Because of the scientific valua of his wofk. Dr. Schwartz has received the gold medal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and the bronze one of the American Medical Association. The University of Rochester dees not make shoes according to Dr. Schwartz’s specifications. It leaves that to a shoe manufacturer. About 250,000 pairs of shoes designed in accordance with Dr. Schw'artz’s principles have been sold.