The Shambulance is an occasional series in which I try to find the truth about bogus or overhyped health products. Helping me keep the Shambulance on course are Steven Swoap and Daniel Lynch, both biology professors at Williams College.
Sticking a Q-tip up one’s nose is not the source of many great insights. Yet it’s how an American doctor in the early 20th century developed the theory that became modern reflexology. He would be proud—though maybe a little confused—to see people today flocking to reflexology spas, where practitioners treat all their problems via the soles of their feet.
The American doctor in question was William H. Fitzgerald, an ear, nose and throat specialist. In a 1917 book, he explained the genesis of his big idea:
Six years ago I accidentally discovered that pressure with a cotton tipped probe on the muco-cutinous margin (where the skin joins the mucous membrane) of ...
