This is a tale from the Middle Ages with lessons for those of us wearing uncomfortably tight shoes. It involves bodies exhumed in English cemeteries and poulaines [ poo-leyns ], those long, sharply pointy shoes that, not so sadly, went out of style in the 15th century. This sort of footwear is what you might expect to see on an elf. One 11th century monk called them “shoes like scorpion tails.” But in their day, they were the bomb.

British archaeologists suggest that poulaines might have caused a veritable epidemic of bunions in the 14th and 15th centuries when the shoes were highly fashionable. A bunion is a bony and painful bump on the joint at the base of the big toe. It causes the big toe to pull toward its smaller companions, forcing the joint out of kilter.

Bunions are thought to be caused by an inherited mechanical defect in the structure of the foot that can be worsened by tight shoes. Enter poulaines, king of cramped footwear.

Those curious British researchers dug up some medieval graves — 177 skeletons in all. They got their shovels out at several locales, including an old parish church cemetery and at a friary. In examining these unearthed bones, scientists found 18% of all skeletons had evidence of bunions, presumably from poulaines.

Proving the pointy shoes helped create those bunions is extremely difficult across the centuries. Still, other research has shown that modern women who wear constrictive footwear in their 20s are more likely to develop bunions later in life.

Scorpion tails today are thankfully museum relics. But in any age, it’s good advice to keep your feet comfortable. The dead tell the tale.