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.  The shoe fitting fluoroscope had a little
box on the bottom, to put the tips of one's feet through, and
three different viewing windows. Once the feet were put through,
the person was pretty much standing on an x-ray tube, and rays
were shot upwards so that a fluorescent image of the feet was
visible through each of the little