A Strapping

Low-Dye taping is the foundation of most biomechanically based acute care, and it is taught to podiatry students in their earliest clinical days. Despite its status as a mainstay of treatment, the origins and complexities of its application are vague and incompletely understood. This concise article by Ralph Dye, the originator of this form of podiatric practice, describes the taping technique in detail but glosses over the nuances of how the foot is positioned while the tape is applied. The article only alludes to “massage and manipulation” that should be used to “prepare the foot” for the benefits of this strapping, and there is no technical description of how this should be performed. It was most likely these “massage and manipulation” maneuvers that gave Dye the outcomes that became legendary in the earlier days of podiatric medicine. For those of us who have found manual, manipulative care of the foot so beneficial, it would have been very helpful to have his methods of care documented in more detail. We are left to fill in the blanks in our efforts to reproduce results that brought podiatric biomechanics through its infancy.

The take-home lesson here is that for those of us with specific techniques that produce excellent outcomes, describing them in writing and submitting them for publication in professional journals may assist others many years hence to manage difficult situations by reference to the work of those who preceded them.