Orthopedics: The Custom-Tailored Chair

“The sign of hospitality in America,” said the visiting Danish physician, “is an uncomfortable chair.” The University of Copenhagen’s Dr. Egill Snorrason hastened to add that much the same is true in Europe. Chairs, he complained, have traditionally been designed for show, with little or no regard to their effects on the sitter’s back. From the hard, right-angled church pew at one extreme, to the overstuffed club chair at the other, he told a Yale-New Haven Medical Center forum last week, most chairs fail to give support where it is most needed: in the lower back.

As a result, said Dr. Snorrason, the sitter’s muscles and ligaments stretch and he becomes fatigued. Long periods in a conventional chair can cause lumbago (generalized pain in the loins), sciatica from pressure on the sciatic nerves, or even contribute to disk displacement resulting in extremely painful pinched nerves in the lower back.

Dr. Snorrason’s design for an ideal chair for the average man lies halfway between the pew and the club chair (see diagram). It has a seat that slopes slightly downward toward the rear, and it has a back-supporting protruding pad five or six inches above the seat, in the small of the back. For most people, the front of the chair should be 17 to 18 inches high, and the seat 16 inches square. Because no one chair can be ideal for everyone, Dr. Snorrason suggested that the chair in which a man spends most of his time should be custom-tailored. “We always fit shoes to the individual,” he said. “So why not chairs too?”