When X-rays were given in shoe stores

History contains many examples of medical functions performed by frighteningly unqualified people. Barbers once were also dentists. Whoever was the oldest lady in the village was also a midwife. And x-rays were shot through children's feet - by shoe store attendants.
It's no secret that people of the 1930s and 1940s had an unhealthy fascination with radiation. People put radium in health tonics, food, and toothpaste. They boiled themselves under UV lamps. They used radiation to mutate garden vegetables. So when they found a way to check the fits of a shoe, and all it took was shooting an x-ray through a child's foot, naturally they jumped on it.

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