FEET FIRST: THE SCHOLL STORY

FEET FIRST: THE SCHOLL STORY is a one-of-a-kind exhibit dedicated to Dr. William Mathias Scholl and to the amazing structures that are our feet. This permanent exhibit is housed at the Dr. William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

Dr. Scholl recognized the need for education and began the Illinois College of Chiropody and Orthopedics in 1912, which in 1981 became the Dr. William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine. Photographs and information illustrating the early days of the college are on display.

Visitors are invited to learn about Dr. Scholl's career that bridged the worlds of business, foot care, and education through historical photos and artifacts in a re-creation of a Scholl Foot Comfort Shop storefront from the 1930s. He was a master marketer as samples of his advertising, promotion and product display materials reveal. Visitors can listen to a series of Scholl radio commercials from the 1930s and view memorable television commercials. The EZ Your Feet Theater presents a nine-minute film tracing Dr. Scholl's life and the rise of the company he built into an international foot comfort empire. The film includes rare footage of a 1937 training film for his salespeople.

Key artifacts visitors may examine include an oversized skeletal model of the human foot, plaster casts of feet, a fluoroscope commonly used to aid in shoe-fitting found in shoe stores until the 1950s, and a spinning Zoetrope, a nineteenth-century forerunner of the motion picture projector that illustrates the gait cycle, the process of walking. Also on display is one of the world's largest shoes worn by Mr. Robert Wadlow of Alton, Illinois, who grew to 8' 11.1" and wore a size 44 shoe.