Have you ever ruined your feet in a pair of incredibly modern, but unfortunately totally uncomfortable shoes?
Don't worry, you're not the first to experience this. Even in the Middle Ages, people put up with a lot for stylish shoes. This is shown by studies of foot bones carried out by researchers in England.
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They noticed that skeletons showed significantly more signs of hallux valgus from about the mid-14th century. This is a deformity where the big toe points more outward toward the others. Wrong footwear can promote this misalignment. And that apparently happened in the Middle Ages, because in the 14th century a new shoe fashion emerged in England: flat shoes with an extremely long toe were worn - in some cases they were so long that you could only walk in them could if tied to the shin. The researchers suspect that these narrow toes were not a good idea for people with a predisposition to hallux valgus. Incidentally, the new shoes also caused a lot of trouble in other ways - and in 1463 King Edward IV restricted the length of the toes for all subjects under the Rank of Lord to a good two inches.