Medicine: Back-Pocket Blues

Clothing manufacturers and automobile designers are unwittingly responsible for a malady that Dr. Nathaniel Gould of Brockton, Mass., calls "back-pocket sciatica." Gould, who described the disorder in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, first became aware of it when a colleague who made a large number of house calls complained that he suffered from leg pains while sitting in the confining bucket seat of his sports car. Gould could find no obvious cause of the discomfort but noticed that the doctor carried a bulging wallet in his hip pocket. He speculated that the wallet might be pressing against the sciatic nerve and suggested that the physician remove it. When he did, his pain disappeared. Gould's theory was confirmed when he developed the same ailment. Golfer Gould's habit of carrying golf balls in his left back pocket never bothered him until he rode around the course in a golf cart. Then he too developed—and just as quickly cured—his own case of the back-pocket blues.