Part 7

Another has a halting, shuffling, undecided gait; while a third walks in a bold, determined, straight-forward, erect and independent manner. One has a cautious, parsimonious step, as if sparing of shoe-leather, or afraid to trust the ground; he has, however, probably, trusted the funds with considerable investments. Some walk with long, pretentious, measured strides; others make short, quick, insignificant steps. Some, again, are hurried, fussy, noisy; while others glide along in a quiet, shrinking, unpretending, it may be timid, manner.

I need not dilate upon these diversities. Your own observation will supply abundant illustrations of the correspondence between character and manner of walking.

The several movements in walking are under the control of the WILL, and are directed by it, to such an extent that the continuous agency of the will is essential to the process. If the influence of the will be suspended, but for a moment, the action ceases, and the man falls to the ground. Nevertheless, the play of the individual muscles, and their co-ordination, or the manner in which their several movements are combined, are, in a great measure, independent of the will. They are, to a certain extent, automatic, and result from peculiar relations between the nervous and the muscular systems. The will may be compared to the driver of an engine, who, by turning on the steam, and maintaining the supply, sets the machine in motion, and regulates the rate of its speed; but the several wheels are so arranged that they go on irrespectively of his immediate superintendence. It would be impossible for the engine-man to attend to the working of each detail of his machine; and it would be too much for the will to have to direct all the movements of the limbs in walking. We should be wearied with such an effort of attention before we had walked across a room; for the exercise of the will is exhausting, and soon engenders fatigue. The more we think of any movement and take pains to direct it, the sooner we are tired and unable to continue it; and the more the attention is diverted, the less quickly do we experience a feeling of exhaustion; while those movements in the body which are not at all under the influence of the will--the movements of the heart for instance--go on unceasingly, through a long life, without any sense of weariness. What so prevents fatigue, when we are walking, as the diverting conversation of an agreeable companion?

But though the combination of the movements in walking is, to a certain extent, automatic, it is not complete without the proper control of the will. This is proved by the gait of those unfortunate beings in whom the mind, and with it commonly the will, is deficient from birth--I mean IDIOTS. Their movements are, usually, more or less, irregular and unharmonious, jerky, without proper steadiness and rhythm; the head is tossed about; the eye looks one way; the fingers are sprawled out in another direction; the foot is jerked out at a hazard, as it were, so that you don’t know when it will reach the ground, perhaps it kicks against the other foot. A sad spectacle this. The visit to an Idiot Asylum fills one, it is true, with a sense of the value of an institution where these poor members of the human family are kept out of harm’s way, and away from the gibes of the village boys, and are made clean, and tidy, and taught so far as they are capable of instruction; but I know no sadder sight than is presented by a string of the inmates of such an asylum, guided from room to room by the foremost of the number, who shews by his walk, somewhat more steady than that of the others, that he is gifted with rather more intelligence than they, and is so fitted to be their guide.

An equally melancholy, an even more distressing, spectacle is that of criminals pacing, like animals in their dens, up and down the court-yard of their prison; for in them we know, that there is no deficiency of will. It is strong enough to control and regulate the movements of their limbs; but there is a still more important deficiency, viz. a deficiency of that moral sense which should control the will.

Another sad, but physiologically interesting, sight is the rolling walk of the drunkard. Here, again, the will is not deficient; but it is, partly, and by its own agency, dethroned. Enough of the will is left to set the machine going, not enough to guide it and control it well. Though the movements follow one another, for the most part, in proper sequence, they are uncertain and ill-directed. The balancing power is partly lost. The feet are dragged hither and thither, and thrown about, by the swerving weight of the body; and they follow one another upon the ground at uncertain intervals, and in any but a straight line. You watch a man in this state staggering from side to side, and wonder how he keeps his legs at all. Soon the foot catches against some slight obstacle or against the other leg, or fails to come quickly enough into the required place, and the man rolls over. The supple manner in which his unstrung limbs give under the weight, perhaps, saves him, to some extent, from the shock; but you must not imagine that drunkards have any charm against injury. A large proportion of the accidents admitted into our Hospitals are the result of drunkenness.

Distinctive Features of the Human Foot.

I have already made a few comparisons between the human foot and that of certain of the lower animals. It will be interesting to add some others.

There are several animals, as the Monkey, the Bear, and some Reptiles, in which the foot resembles the human foot in many particulars. It has, for instance, the same number of toes as the human foot, and the same, or nearly the same, number of bones, and the latter disposed in much the same manner. Certain peculiarities, however, distinguish the human foot. These all have reference to the power which man, and man alone, possesses of standing firmly upright, and of walking steadily, upon the two feet.

The following are the most important of these distinctive features.

First. The several parts are fitted and bound together in a compact firm manner, so as to combine strength and elasticity in the highest degree. In this respect the human foot contrasts very remarkably with the sprawling foot of the Seal or Lizard (figs. 2 and 3, p. 11). The result is obtained, partly, by the great size of the tarsal bones, in proportion to the other components of the foot, and, partly, by the formation of the “Plantar Arch,” which is higher and stronger in man than in any of the lower animals.

Secondly. The TOES are short and small in relation to the other parts of the foot. In many animals, the Monkey for instance (fig. 44, p. 89), the toes form the greater part of the foot; and, in some, the bones of the instep are reduced in number as well as in size: the reason being that, in such animals, the toes are required to perform a variety of offices--burrowing in the ground, scratching, holding on to the branches of trees, catching and tearing prey, &c.--for which their services are not needed by man.

It may here be noticed that one of the great points of dissimilarity between the foot and the hand consists in the difference which the length of the digits bears to the other components in the two members. They form nearly half the length of the hand, but not more than a tenth of that of the foot. Clearly, therefore, they constitute a far less important segment of the lower limb than they do of the upper, and are intended to perform much less important functions in it. In the hand the fingers and thumb may be said to constitute the essential part; whereas the toes do little more than help the foot to adapt itself to inequalities of the ground and so to obtain a firmer holding. In civilized countries, accordingly, where we walk, chiefly, upon even paths and paved streets, very little evil results from the loss of the services of the toes which is incurred by covering over the foot to protect it against the hardness of the roads.

We often hear the toes spoken of as ill-treated members, which are not allowed fair play because the art of man keeps them in a state of inertness and deprives them of their natural functions. Anatomy, too, gives some countenance to the idea, inasmuch as it shews that the muscles which minister to the toes are as numerous as those which are concerned in moving the fingers; and we occasionally see persons, who, having been born without hands, or having lost them, contrive to write and paint and do other unusual offices with their toes. Watch the movements in an infant’s foot as yet unshod. They are considerably more free than in your own; especially you will observe that there is a power of separating the great toe from the others and approximating it to them which you have, probably, altogether lost. The small size, however, of the toes, and the comparative fixedness of the inner, or great toe, prove, that they were never intended for anything like the same variety of purposes as the fingers, and shew that, under the most favourable circumstances, the pes could never be altera manus, as some would persuade us that it is. Certainly it was never intended to be an organ of prehension. Hence, although in practice, boot-makers may excite our wrath and deserve our condemnation, I don’t think that, in principle, they are so much to be complained of.

The third striking peculiarity of the human foot is the size of the inner or GREAT TOE and the firm manner in which its metatarsal bone is joined to the other bones, so as to render it a main pillar of support to the foot. These features of the great toe have reference to the share of the weight of the body which is borne by the inner side of the foot, more particularly during the last stage of the step, when the body is propelled forwards over the other foot. Hence it is sometimes called the “hallux,” from a Greek word (ἅλ-λομαι) signifying to bound or spring. The mobility of the thumb, enabling it to be opposed so easily to each of the other fingers, is a characteristic of the human hand; and the solidity of the great toe is equally, or even more, characteristic of the human foot. The great toe should be continued, from the instep, straight along the inner edge of the foot, or inclined a little inwards; often, as before mentioned, its phalanges become inclined outwards so as to interfere with the other toes.

In ancient times warriors were wont to cut off the great toes as well as the thumbs of their captives to disable them for further service (Judges i. 6, 7).

Though, in many animals the number of the toes is the same as in man, this is not the case in all; and we may trace a gradual and progressive diminution of the number, in the following order.

40. Hippopotamus.

41. Rhinoceros.

42. Ox.

43. Horse.]

I have said (page 10) that the inner toe is incomplete in all animals, forasmuch as, in none, does it possess the same complement of bones as do the other toes. You will not be surprised to find, therefore, that it is the first to be missing. The ELEPHANT goes upon five toes; but if you look closely you will perceive that the inner toe (fig. 39, I.) has not attained even its usual incomplete number of bones. It is short of one; and the inner wedge-bone, which looks like a metacarpal bone, is prolonged, downwards, to supply the place, and to give sufficient length to the toe. The same thing may be seen in some other animals, and it is interesting as shewing the first indication of departure from what may be called the standard number of the phalanges. In the HIPPOPOTAMUS (fig. 40) we have an additional stage of imperfection in this same toe; for here there is only one small bone to remind us of the existence of the toe (it is the same in the Rhinoceros, I.); all the rest have failed to be developed; and the animal, consequently, goes upon four toes. Next the failure appears on the outer side of the foot, and affects the little toe. Thus, the RHINOCEROS (fig. 41) goes upon three toes--namely, Nos. II. III. and IV.--and there is scarcely a trace either of the first toe or of the fifth. In Ruminating animals, as the OX (fig. 42), the second toe is wanting, as well as the first and the fifth; so that the foot rests upon two toes (Nos. III. and IV.); and in the HORSE (fig. 43), as we have already seen, only one toe--the middle one (No. III.)--is developed sufficiently to reach the ground.

Whatever pretensions to Humanity the MONKEY may make--and they are sufficiently striking to render some persons very uncomfortable on the score of relationship--he is certainly far removed from us in the construction of the foot (fig. 44); and the good people to whom I have alluded may derive consolation from the reflection that, in this respect at least, there is very little indication of cousinship. Indeed we ought not to speak of his foot at all; for the part which corresponds with the human foot does not even deserve that name. It is so much more like a hand, that the term four-handed, or quadrumanous, is by naturalists applied to this class of animals. There is scarcely any plantar arch; the animal bears, chiefly, upon the outer edge of the foot; the digits are long and strong; and the inner one, instead of being parallel with the others, diverges from them so as to constitute a true thumb instead of a great toe. All these points are very suitable for enabling the animal to cling to branches of trees, and for other prehensile purposes; but they unfit him for the upright posture, and render it impossible for him to walk steadily upon his lower limbs.

In the great ape called the GORILLA, which is found in the south-western part of Africa, and of which many specimens have now been sent to this Country, the hind-hand is of great size and strength, as may be seen in the accompanying drawing made from a stuffed specimen in the British Museum. The lower part of the leg is also very thick, owing to the size of the muscles which move the great toe and the other digits, and which enable them to give a most powerful grasp. So strong and savage is the creature that all efforts to capture one alive, when full-grown, have, hitherto, failed. He is said to give evidence of his strength of hand and of his amiable propensities in the following way. He swings by his fore-hands from the trees, and, letting himself down quietly by them, watches an opportunity of seizing by the neck, with his huge hind-hand, some unwary Negro who may be passing by, draws him up, and holds him with vice-like grasp, till his struggles have ceased, and then drops him a strangled corpse to the ground.

Most of the characters above mentioned as distinctive of the human foot--such as its compactness and strength, the height of the plantar arch, the shortness of the toes--are, like the size of the calf, most marked in the higher members of the human family, in those, that is to say, who are gifted with the highest intelligence. Thus the formation of the foot is found to have a correspondence with the formation of the head, and may, like it, be, to a certain extent, taken, as I have before remarked, to be an index of intellectual, as well as of physical, capacity. The relation between the intellectual power and the physical conformation of man, which is here exemplified, and which is maintained throughout the frame, is a subject of extreme interest, and is one which has not attracted the attention of anatomists and ethnologists so much as it deserves.

To what secondary causes this harmonious adaptation of body to mind may be due, we cannot clearly tell; but we can see in it a provision for giving physical ascendancy to superior intellect. And it is most gratifying to be able to derive, as we may do, from this as well as from the observation of the past and the present, the assurance that the cultivation of the mind, provided its moral tone be preserved and proper sanitary precautions be taken, is not likely to be attended with any deterioration of the body. On the contrary, we have good reason to believe that the present civilized nations of the earth, with their higher mental culture, are inferior to none of their predecessors in the qualities of the body; surely soldiers never maintained a hand-to-hand struggle better than the victors at Inkermann; and we know that the civilized nations are physically superior to most of the uncivilized. We have good ground, therefore, to hope that the extension of education and commerce will be productive, on the whole, of an improvement of the physical condition of the species.

Sir James Emerson Tennent says that the Veddahs, or aboriginal inhabitants of Ceylon, use the foot in drawing the bow. They sit down, place the toe against it, and draw the string with the hand; and some of the American Indians appear to have used both feet in the same way. These Veddahs furnish a good illustration of the low physical condition which is usually associated with absence of mental culture. They are described as in a singularly degraded state. “They have scarcely any language, no knowledge of God, nor of a future state, no temples, no idols, no altars, prayers, or charms; and, in short, no instinct of worship, except it be some addiction to ceremonies, analogous to devil worship, to avert storms, lightning, and sickness. All presented the same characteristics of wretchedness and dejection--projecting mouths, prominent teeth, flattened noses, stunted stature, and other evidences of the physical depravity which is the usual consequence of hunger and ignorance. The children were unsightly objects, entirely naked, with misshapen joints, huge heads, and protuberant stomachs. The women were the most repulsive specimens of humanity I have ever seen in any country.”

The Proportions of the Limbs.