Heeled Shoes and Schizophrenia

Alarming:

"Heeled footwear began to be used more than a 1000 years ago, and led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia. Industrialization of shoe production increased schizophrenia prevalence. Mechanization of the production started in Massachusetts, spread from there to England and Germany, and then to the rest of Western Europe. A remarkable increase in schizophrenia prevalence followed the same pattern. In Baden in Germany the increasing stream of young patients more or less hastily progrediating to a severe state of cognitive impairment made it possible for Kraepelin to delineate dementia praecox as a nosological entity. The patients continued to use heeled shoes after they were admitted to the hospitals and the disease progrediated."

I have no idea what "progrediated" is, by the way, or "nosological" although I'll be looking them up momentarily.

This was too good to wait for April 1st.  The journal it appears in is called "Medical Hypothesis", and apparently some of them are pretty outlandish.

Thanks to JZ for this brilliant find.