NEGLECT HITHERTO OF THE HAND AND FINGERS.
Many books have been written on gymnastics, but I am not acquainted
with one which treats of the gymnastical exercise of the _fingers_.
Why these important members of the human body should until now have
been so much overlooked and neglected, it is difficult to understand.
For, as Professor Richter in Dresden says, “Next to the more powerful
development of the brain, it is almost exclusively the structure and
skill of the fingers and hand which raises man above the brute, and has
made him ruler of the earth.”
In order, therefore, to heighten the capacities of the human hand, the
joints of the hand and fingers should, from early youth, be exercised
gymnastically, as much and in as many various ways as possible, partly
by free exercises, partly by means of mechanical appliances.
Gymnastics, according to anatomists and physicians, is the
_stretching_, _extending_, _pressing_, and _training_ of the muscles,
the ligaments, and the limbs of the body.[5]
Flexibility, agility, and strength can be acquired only by means of a
regular exercise of the muscles of the body.
Strength and power impart agility and quickness. This every physician
and every sensible man knows.
A soldier only becomes fit for his work after the muscles of his body
have been gymnastically attended to and developed. Any man, having to
perform hard physical labour, must exercise his muscles gymnastically,
and every one ought to exercise those particular limbs the use of which
is most necessary for his profession.
And more than any one else, the _teachers of music_ have to experience
the consequences of a want of skill and strength in the hands of many
learners, and they know how greatly a systematic educational training
of the fingers and hands for the execution of the more delicate
movements is needed at all times.
Nevertheless, there are many arts besides music for which the hand
ought to be also trained from early youth, in order to be able
permanently to accomplish, in later years, what is excellent, _e.
g._, many kinds of handicraft, machine-work, needle-work, anatomy, and
surgery, writing and drawing, and all fine manipulations.
An untrained hand will either remain clumsy in these branches of work,
or it will soon fail through over-exertion, which causes a peculiar
kind of paralysis, connected with cramp, and well known to writers
(the so-called writers’ cramp), but which also affects musicians,
artists, shoemakers, tailors, sempstresses, and other working people.
Certain it is, that if this matter had been inquired into before, and
public attention directed to it, a great deal of trouble and vexation
in learning music might have been saved; the labour of many working
people of all classes, who chiefly have to use their fingers, have been
greatly facilitated; and, moreover, many diseases of the joints of the
fingers and hand might have have been prevented.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The following quotations from the works of some of the leading
authorities may be of interest to the reader:—
“Methodical gymnastic exercises of the hands and fingers afford the
very best means of overcoming the technical difficulties.”—Schmidt’s
“Annals of Medicine.”
“Technical difficulties will most safely and quickly be conquered by
proper gymnastic exercises of the hand and fingers.”—Dr Dietz, Member
of the Royal Council of Medicine.
“To obtain technical skill and muscular steadiness, a gymnastic
education is the best means.”—P. M. Link. The gymnast exercises
his limbs through preparatory exercises; how, therefore, is it
possible for the player of the piano and violin to dispense with this
gymnastic preparation of the joints of the hand and fingers?”—Prof.
Rector v. Schmidt, President of the Royal Gymnasium. “La souplesse
et l’étendue des poignets dépendent du développement gymnastique
des forces. La gymnastique développe l’aisance et la grâce.”—Dr M.
Bally. “For so great an art as piano or violin playing, the muscles of
the fingers are weak; they ought to be prepared by proper gymnastic
exercises.”—Ferguson.