Epidermal paradoxes in footballers – a preliminary study by Bill Kirton
When I’m writing, I prefer silence. I don’t think I suffer from hyperacusis (which is the term applied to the condition of a person who has difficulty tolerating what’s laughingly known as ‘normal’ environmental sound), but loud noises especially bring on an unwelcome feeling of tension. That, however, is nothing compared with an other condition in which the sufferer demonstrates an equivalently enhanced level of sensitivity to external stimuli and for which there is not yet a convenient label. It’s what I’ve come to think of as Epidermal Dissociation Footballeriensis because the symptoms manifest themselves most frequently on the football pitch (or, for those for whom ‘football’ means a game in which the ball is rarely struck with the foot, the soccer field). The football season in the UK is well under way, of course. but while reports focus on transfers, wages, managerial sackings and the like, hardly any attention is paid to this serious condition, which seems to man...