It was solely a matter of how much the customer wanted to pay, and the style the customer wanted—not what the customer needed.
Thousands of people have been "all crippled up" because their shoes were too short, or too narrow, or the wrong shape. The old-fashioned shoe clerk knew his stock, but he didn't know enough about the customer's feet to know when the customer was properly fitted.
Just as thousands of people have trouble with their glasses because they were fitted by an optician—"over the counter,"—instead of having an oculist prescribe for them.
And, partly because improperly fitted at drug-stores, and partly because drug-store trusses are usually mere makeshifts, thousands of people are to-day wearing trusses which are doing immense harm instead of good—trusses which cause the rupture to grow constantly worse.
Even if there is any druggist in the country who does happen to know much about rupture and about fitting trusses, he'd have to be a mighty bright man to be able to fit you at all properly with the kind of trusses sold in the average drug-store.
Practically all the drug-store trusses are simply some form of the old belt or springs and leg-strap truss—though sold under hundreds of different names as "improvements." They are usually cheaply constructed—turned out by machinery in immense quantities.
And they are always ready-made "stock" trusses. Each kind made in only one model or style, and the pads in only a few different shapes and sizes.
Making mighty scant provision for the wide variation between the ruptures of different people; making mighty little allowance for the fact that what will do for one man won't do at all for another.
Each Man Requires Something Different
Your rupture, when out, may be the size of a hen's egg; your neighbor may have a protrusion almost as big as his head; and a lot of other men with protrusions ranging all the way from one extreme to the other. To say nothing of big differences in other ways besides size.