[Illustration]
The starting-point of this paper was a desire to call attention to
certain remarkable AMERICAN INVENTIONS, especially to one class of
mechanical contrivances, which, at the present time, assumes a vast
importance and interests great multitudes. The limbs of our friends and
countrymen are a part of the melancholy harvest which War is sweeping
down with Dahlgren's mowing-machine and the patent reapers of
Springfield and Hartford. The admirable contrivances of an American
inventor, prized as they were in ordinary times, have risen into the
character of great national blessings since the necessity for them has
become so widely felt. While the weapons that have gone from Mr. Colt's
armories have been carrying death to friend and foe, the beneficent
and ingenious inventions of MR. PALMER have been repairing the losses
inflicted by the implements of war.
The study of the artificial limbs which owe their perfection to his
skill and long-continued labor has led us a little beyond its first
object, and finds its natural prelude in some remarks on the natural
limbs and their movements. Accident directed our attention, while
engaged with this subject, to the efforts of another ingenious American
to render the use of our lower extremities easier by shaping their
artificial coverings more in accordance with their true form than is
done by the empirical cordwainer, and thus _Dr. Plumer_ must submit to
the coupling of some mention of his praiseworthy efforts in the same
pages with the striking achievements of his more aspiring compatriot.
We should not tell the whole truth, if we did not own that we have for
a long time been lying in wait for a chance to say something about the
mechanism of walking, because we thought we could add something to what
is known about it from a new source, accessible only within the last
few years, and never, so far as we know, employed for its elucidation,
namely, _the instantaneous photograph_.
* * * * *
The two accomplishments common to all mankind are walking and talking.
Simple as they seem, they are yet acquired with vast labor, and very
rarely understood in any clear way by those who practise them with
perfect ease and unconscious skill.
Talking seems the hardest to comprehend. Yet it has been clearly
explained and successfully imitated by artificial contrivances. We
know that the moist membranous edges of a narrow crevice (the glottis)
vibrate as the reed of a clarionet vibrates, and thus produce the human
_bleat_. We narrow or widen or check or stop the flow of this sound by
the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus _articulate_, or break into
joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and
kind of interruption, as the "babble" of the brook with the shape and
size of its impediments,--pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper is to
articulate without _bleating_, or vocalizing; to _coo_ as babies do is
to bleat or vocalize without articulating. Machines are easily made that
bleat not unlike human beings. A bit of India-rubber tube tied round a
piece of glass tube is one of the simplest voice-uttering contrivances.
To make a machine that _articulates_ is not so easy; but we remember
Maelzel's wooden children, which said, "Pa-pa" and "Ma-ma"; and more
elaborate and successful speaking machines have, we believe, been since
constructed.
But no man has been able to make a figure that can _walk_. Of all the
automata imitating men or animals moving, there is not one in which the
legs are the true sources of motion. So said the Webers[A] more than
twenty years ago, and it is as true now as then. These authors, after a
profound experimental and mathematical investigation of the mechanism
of animal locomotion, recognize the fact that our knowledge is not yet
advanced enough to hope to succeed in making real walking machines. But
they conceive that the time may come hereafter when colossal figures
will be constructed whose giant strides will not be arrested by the
obstacles which are impassable to wheeled conveyances.
[Footnote A: _Traité de la Méchanique des Organes de la Locomotion_,
Translated from the German in the _Encyclopédie Anatomique_. Paris,
1843.]
We wish to give our readers as clear an idea as possible of that
wonderful art of balanced vertical progression which they have
practised, as M. Jourdain talked prose, for so many years, without
knowing what a marvellous accomplishment they had mastered. We shall
have to begin with a few simple anatomical data.
The foot is arched both longitudinally and transversely, so as to give
it elasticity, and thus break the sudden shock when the weight of the
body is thrown upon it. The ankle-joint is a loose hinge, and the great
muscles of the calf can straighten the foot out so far that practised
dancers walk on the tips of their toes. The knee is another hinge-joint,
which allows the leg to bend freely, but not to be carried beyond a
straight line in the other direction. Its further forward movement is
checked by two very powerful cords in the interior of the joint, which
cross each other like the letter X, and are hence called the _crucial
ligaments_. The upper ends of the thighbones are almost globes, which
are received into the deep cup-like cavities of the haunch-bones. They
are tied to these last so loosely, that, if their ligaments alone held
them, they would be half out of their sockets in many positions of the
lower limbs. But here comes in a simple and admirable contrivance. The
smooth, rounded head of the thighbone, moist with glairy fluid, fits so
perfectly into the smooth, rounded cavity which receives it, that it
holds firmly by _suction_, or atmospheric pressure. It takes a hard pull
to draw it out after all the ligaments are cut, and then it comes with a
smack like a tight cork from a bottle. Holding in this way by the close
apposition of two polished surfaces, the lower extremity swings freely
forward and backward like a _pendulum_, if we give it a chance, as is
shown by standing on a chair upon the other limb, and moving the pendent
one out of the vertical line. The force with which it swings depends
upon its weight, and this is much greater than we might at first
suppose; for our limbs not only carry themselves, but our bodies also,
with a sense of lightness rather than of weight, when we are in good
condition. Accident sometimes makes us aware how heavy our limbs are. An
officer, whose arm was shattered by a ball in one of our late battles,
told us that the dead weight of the helpless member seemed to drag him
down to the earth; he could hardly carry it; it "weighed a ton," to his
feeling, as he said.
In _ordinary walking_, a man's lower extremity swings essentially by its
own weight, requiring little muscular effort to help it. So heavy a body
easily overcomes all impedimenta from clothing, even in the sex least
favored in its costume. But if a man's legs are pendulums, then a short
man's legs will swing quicker than a tall man's, and he will take more
steps to a minute, other things being equal. Thus there is a natural
rhythm to a man's walk, depending on the length of his legs, which beat
more or less rapidly as they are longer or shorter, like metronomes
differently adjusted, or the pendulums of different time-keepers.
Commodore Nutt is to M. Bihin in this respect as a little, fast-ticking
mantel-clock is to an old-fashioned, solemn-clicking, upright
time-piece.
The mathematical formulae in which the Messrs. Weber embody their
results would hardly be instructive to most of our readers. The figures
of their Atlas would serve our purpose better, had we not the means of
coming nearer to the truth than even their careful studies enabled them
to do. We have selected a number of instantaneous stereoscopic views of
the streets and public places of Paris and of New York, each of them
showing numerous walking figures, among which some may be found in
every stage of the complex act we are studying. Mr. Darley has had the
kindness to leave his higher tasks to transfer several of these to our
pages, so that the reader may be sure that he looks upon an exact copy
of real human individuals in the act of walking.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
The first subject is caught with his legs stretched in a stride, the
remarkable length of which arrests our attention. The sole of the right
foot is almost vertical. By the action of the muscles of the calf it has
_rolled off_ from the ground like a portion of the tire of a wheel, the
heel rising first, and thus the body, already advancing with all its
acquired velocity, and inclined forward, has been pushed along, and, as
it were, _tipped over_, so as to fall upon the other foot, now ready to
receive its weight.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
In the second figure, the right leg is bending at the knee, so as to
lift the foot from the ground, in order that it may swing forward.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
The next stage of movement is shown in the _left_ leg of figure 3. This
leg is seen suspended in air, a little beyond the middle of the arc
through which it swings, and before it has straightened itself, which it
will presently do, as shown in the next figure.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
The foot has now swung forward, and, tending to swing back again, the
limb being straightened, and the body tipped forward, the heel strikes
the ground. The angle which the sole of the foot forms with the ground
increases with the length of the stride; and as this last surprised us,
so the extent of this angle astonishes us in many of the figures, in
this among the rest.
The heel strikes the ground with great force, as the wear of our boots
and shoes in that part shows us. But the projecting heel of the human
foot is the arm of a lever, haying the ankle-joint as its fulcrum, and,
as it strikes the ground, brings the sole of the foot down flat upon it,
as shown in figure 1. At the same time the weight of the limb and body
is thrown upon the foot, by the joint effect of muscular action and
acquired velocity, and the other foot is now ready to rise from the
ground and repeat the process we have traced in its fellow.
No artist would have dared to draw a walking figure in attitudes like
some of these. The swinging limb is so much shortened that the toe never
by any accident scrapes the ground, if this is tolerably even. In cases
of partial paralysis, the scraping of the toe, as the patient walks, is
one of the characteristic marks of imperfect muscular action.
Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a perpetual self-recovery. It
is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, which we divest of
its extreme danger only by continual practice from a very early period
of life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to analyze it, and
we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the time of the
instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when we walk
against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous it is,
when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating our
limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, and discover
with what headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves forward.
Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a man is shorter when he is
walking than when at rest. We have found a very simple way of showing
this by having a rod or yardstick placed horizontally, so as to touch
the top of the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rapidly
beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, to avoid involuntary stooping,
the top of the head will not even graze the rod. The other fact is, that
one side of a man always tends to outwalk the other, so that no person
can walk far in a straight line, if he is blindfolded.
The somewhat singular illustration at the head of our article carries
out an idea which has only been partially alluded to by others. Man is
a _wheel_, with two spokes, his legs, and two fragments of a tire, his
feet. He _rolls_ successively on each of these fragments from the heel
to the toe. If he had spokes enough, he would go round and round as the
boys do when they "make a wheel" with their four limbs for its spokes.
But having only two available for ordinary locomotion, each of these has
to be taken up as soon as it has been used, and carried forward to
be used again, and so alternately with the pair. The peculiarity of
biped-walking is, that the centre of gravity is shifted from one leg to
the other, and the one not employed can shorten itself so as to swing
forward, passing by that which supports the body.
This is just what no automaton can do. Many of our readers have,
however, seen a young lady in the shop-windows, or entertained her in
their own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto impossible
walking automaton, and who calls herself by the Homeric-sounding epithet
_Autoperipatetikos._ The golden-booted legs of this young lady remind
us of Miss Kilmansegg, while their size assures us that she is not in
any way related to Cinderella. On being wound up, as if she were a piece
of machinery, and placed on a level surface, she proceeds to toddle off,
taking very short steps like a child, holding herself very stiff and
straight, with a little lifting at each step, and all this with a mighty
inward whirring and buzzing of the enginery which constitutes her
muscular system.
An autopsy of one of her family who fell into our hands reveals the
secret springs of her action. Wishing to spare her as a member of the
defenceless sex, it pains us to say, that, ingenious as her counterfeit
walking is, she is an impostor. Worse than this,--with all our reverence
for her brazen crinoline, duty compels us to reveal a fact concerning
her which will shock the feelings of those who have watched the stately
rigidity of decorum with which she moves in the presence of admiring
multitudes. _She is a quadruped!_. Inside of her great golden boots,
which represent one pair of feet, is another smaller pair, which move
freely through these hollow casings.
[Illustration]
Four _cams_ or eccentric wheels impart motion to her four supports, by
which she is carried forward, always resting on two of them,--the boot
of one side, and the foot of the other. Her movement, then, is not
walking; it is not skating, which it seems to resemble; it is more like
that of a person walking with two crutches besides his two legs. The
machinery is simple enough: a strong spiral spring, three or four
cog-wheels and pinions, a fly to regulate the motion as in a musical
box, and the cams before mentioned. As a toy, it or she is very taking
to grown people as well as children. It is a literal fact, that the
police requested one of our dealers to remove Miss Autoperipatetikos
from his window, because the crowd she drew obstructed the sidewalk.
We see by our analysis of the process, and by the difficulty of
imitating it, that walking is a much more delicate, perilous,
complicated operation than we should suppose, and well worth studying in
a practical point of view, to see what can be done to make it easier and
safer. Two Americans have applied themselves to this task: one laboring
for those who possess their lower limbs and want to use them to
advantage, the other for such as have had the misfortune to lose one or
both of them.
_Dr. J.C. Plumer_, formerly of Portland, now of Boston, has devoted
himself to the study of the foot, and to the construction of a last upon
which a boot or shoe can be moulded which shall be adapted to its form
and accommodated to its action.
Most persons know something of the cruel injustice to which the feet are
subjected, and the extraordinary distortions and diseases to which they
are liable in consequence. The foot's fingers are the slaves in the
republic of the body. Their black leathern integument is only the mask
of their servile condition. They bear the burdens, while the hands,
their white masters, handle the money and wear the rings. They are
crowded promiscuously in narrow prisons, while each of the hand's
fingers claims its separate apartment, leading from the antechamber, in
the dainty glove. As a natural consequence of all this, their faculties
are cramped, they grow into ignoble shapes, they become callous by long
abuse, and all their natural gifts are crushed and trodden out of them.
Dr. Plumer is the Garrison of these oppressed members of the body
corporeal. He comes to break their chains, to lift their bowed figures,
to strengthen their weakness, to restore them to the dignity of digits.
To do this, he begins where every sensible man would, by contemplating
the natural foot as it appears in infancy, unspoiled as yet by
social corruptions, in adults fortunate enough to have escaped these
destructive influences, in the grim skeleton aspect divested of its
outward disguises. We will give the reader two views of the latter kind,
illustrating the longitudinal and transverse arches before spoken of.
[Illustration]
A man who walks on natural surfaces, with his feet unprotected by any
artificial defences, calls the action of these arches into full play at
every step. The longitudinal arch is the most strikingly marked of the
two. In some races and in certain individuals it is much developed, so
as to give the high instep which is prized as an evidence of good blood.
The Arab says that a stream of water can flow under his foot without
touching its sole. Under the conditions supposed, of a naked foot on a
natural surface, the arches of the foot will commonly maintain their
integrity, and give the noble savage or the barefooted Scotch lassie the
elasticity of gait which we admire in the children of Nature.
But as a large portion of mankind tread on artificial hard surfaces,
especially pavements, their feet are subjected to a very unnatural
amount of wear and tear. How great this is the inhabitants of cities
are apt to forget. After passing some months in the country, we have
repeatedly found ourselves terribly lamed and shaken by our first walk
on the pavement. A party of city-folk who landed on a beach upon Cape
Cod complained greatly to one of the natives accompanying them of the
difficulty of walking through the deep sand. "Ah," he answered, "it's
nothing to the trouble I have walking on your city-sidewalks." To save
the feet from the effects of violent percussion and uneven surfaces,
they must be protected by thick soles, and thick soles require strong
upper-leather. When the foot is wedged into one of these casings, a new
boot, a struggle begins between them, which ends in a compromise. The
foot becomes more or less compressed or deformed, and the boot more or
less stretched at the points where the counter-pressure takes place.
On the part of the foot, the effects of this warfare are liable to
show themselves in thickening and inflammation of the integuments, in
displacement of the toes, and occasionally in the breaking down of the
transverse or longitudinal arches. On the part of the boot or shoe,
there is a gradual accommodation which in time fits it to the foot
almost as if it had been moulded upon it, so that a little before it is
worn out it is invaluable, like other blessings brightening before they
take their flight.
Now Mr. Plumer's improvements proceed from two series of data. _First_,
certain theoretical inferences from the facts above named. Finding the
arches liable to break down, he supports the transverse arch by making
the inner surface of the sole corresponding to it _convex_ instead of
concave transversely; he makes the middle portion of the sole convex
again in both directions to support the longitudinal arch, and for the
same reason extends the heel of the boot or shoe forward, so as to
support the anterior portion of the heel of the foot. _Secondly_, Mr.
Plumer takes an old shoe that has done good service, and studies the
reliefs and hollows-which the foot has shaped on the inner surface of
its sole. Comparing the empirical results of this examination with
those based on the anatomical data above given, and finding a general
coincidence in them, he constructs his last in accordance with their
joint teachings. Theoretically, Mr. Plumer is on somewhat dangerous
ground. If the arches of the foot are made to yield like elliptical
springs, why support them? But we subject them to such unnatural
conditions by pressure from above over the instep, by adding high heels
to our boots and shoes, by taking away all yielding qualities from the
soil on which we tread, that very probably they may want artificial
support as much as the soles of the feet want artificial protection. If,
now, we find that an old, easy shoe has worked the inside surface of its
sole into convexities which support the arches, we are safe in imitating
that at any rate. We shall have a new shoe with some, at least, of the
virtues of the old one.
This all sounds very well, and the next question is, whether it works
well. We cannot but remember the coat made for Mr. Gulliver by the
Laputan tailors, which, though projected from the most refined
geometrical data and the most profound calculations, he found to be the
worst fit he ever put on his back. We must ask those who have eaten the
pudding how it tastes, and those who have worn the shoe how it wears. We
have no satisfactory experience of our own, having only within a week
or two, by mere accident, stumbled into a pair of Plumerian boots, and
being thus led to look into a matter which seemed akin to the main
subject of this paper. But the author of "Views Afoot," who ought to be
a sovereign authority on all that interests pedestrians, confirms from
his own experience the favorable opinions expressed by several of our
most eminent physicians, from an examination of the principles of
construction. We are informed that the Plumer last has been recently
adopted for the use of the army. We add our own humble belief that Dr.
Plumer deserves well of mankind for applying sound anatomical principles
to the construction of coverings for the feet, and for contriving a last
serving as a model for a boot or shoe which is adapted to the form of
the foot from the first, instead of having to be broken in by a painful
series of limping excursions, too often accompanied by impatient and
even profane utterances.
* * * * *
It is not two years since the sight of a person who had lost one of his
lower limbs was an infrequent occurrence. Now, alas! there are few of us
who have not a cripple among our friends, if not in our own families. A
mechanical art which provided for an occasional and exceptional want
has become a great and active branch of industry. War unmakes legs, and
human skill must supply their places as it best may.
Our common idea of a wooden leg is realized in the "peg" of the
Greenwich pensioner. This humble contrivance has done excellent service
in its time, and may serve a good purpose still in some cases. A plain
working-man, who has outlived his courting-days and need not sacrifice
much to personal appearance, may find an honest, old-fashioned wooden
leg, cheap, lasting, requiring no repairs, the best thing for his
purpose. In higher social positions, and at an age when appearances are
realities, in the condition of the Marquis of Anglesea, for instance,
it becomes important to provide the cripple with a limb which shall
be presentable in polite society, where misfortunes of a certain
obtrusiveness may be pitied, but are never tolerated under the
chandeliers.
The leg invented by Mr. Potts, and bearing the name of the "Anglesea
leg," was long famous, and doubtless merited the reputation it acquired
as superior to its predecessors. But legs cannot remain stationary while
the march of improvement goes on around them, and they, too, have moved
onward with the stride of progress.
A boy of ten years old, living in a New-Hampshire village, had one of
his legs crushed so as to require amputation. The little fellow was
furnished with a "Peg" and stumped round upon it for ten years. We can
imagine what he suffered as he grew into adolescence under the cross of
this unsightly appendage. He was of comely aspect, tall, well-shaped,
with well-marked, regular features. But just at the period when personal
graces are most valued, when a good presence is a blank check on the
Bank of Fortune, with Nature's signature at the bottom, he found himself
made hideous by this fearful-looking counterfeit of a limb. It announced
him at the threshold he reached with beating heart by a thump more
energetic than the palpitation in his breast. It identified him as far
as the eye of jealousy could see his moving figure. The "peg" became
intolerable, and he unstrapped it and threw himself on the tender
mercies of the crutch.
But the crutch is at best an instrument of torture. It presses upon a
great bundle of nerves; it distorts the figure; it stamps a character of
its own upon the whole organism; it is even accused of distempering the
mind itself.
This young man, whose name was "B. FRANK. PALMER," (the abbreviations
probably implying the name of a distinguished Boston philosopher of the
last century, whose visit to Philadelphia is still remembered in that
city,) set himself at work to contrive a limb which should take
the place of the one he had lost, fulfilling its functions and
counterfeiting its aspect so far as possible. The result was the "Palmer
leg," one of the most unquestionable triumphs of American ingenuity. Its
victorious march has been unimpeded by any serious obstacle since it
first stepped into public notice. The inventor was introduced by the
late Dr. John C. Warren, in 1846, to the Massachusetts General Hospital,
which institution he has for many years supplied with his artificial
limbs. He received medals from the American Institute, the Massachusetts
Charitable Association, and the Great Exhibition in New York, and
obtained an honorary mention from the Royal Commissioners of the World's
Exhibition in London,--being the only maker of legs so distinguished.
These are only a few of fifty honorary awards he has received at various
times. The famous surgeons of London, the _Société de Chirurgie_ of
Paris, and the most celebrated practitioners of the United States have
given him their hearty recommendations. So lately as last August, that
shrewd and skilful surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, who is as cautious in
handling his epithets as he is bold in using the implements of his art,
strongly advised Surgeon-General Hammond to adopt the Palmer leg, which,
after a dozen years' experience, he had found none to equal. We see it
announced that the Board of Surgeons appointed by the Surgeon-General
to select the best arm and leg to be procured by the Government for
its crippled soldiers chose that of Mr. Palmer, and that Dr. Hammond
approved their selection.
We have thought it proper to show that Mr. Palmer's invention did not
stand in need of our commendation. Its merits, as we have seen, are
conceded by the tribunals best fitted to judge, and we are therefore
justified in selecting it as an illustration of American mechanical
skill.
We give three views of the Palmer leg: an inside view when extended, a
second when flexed, a third as it appears externally.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Committee on Science and the Arts of the Franklin Institute of
Pennsylvania thus stated the peculiarities of Mr. Palmer's invention:--
"_First,_ An ingenious arrangement of springs and cords in the _inside_
of the limb, by which, when the wearer is in the erect position, the
limb is extended, and the foot flexed so as to present a natural
appearance.
"_Second_. By a second arrangement of cords and springs in the inside of
the limb, the foot and toes are gradually and easily extended, when
the heel is placed in contact with the ground. In consequence of this
arrangement, the limping gait, and the unpleasant noise made by the
sudden stroke of the ball of the foot upon the ground in walking, which
are so obvious in the ordinary leg, are avoided.
"_Third_. By a peculiar arrangement of the knee-joint, it is rendered
little liable to wear, and all lateral or rotary motion is avoided. It
is hardly necessary to remark that any such motion is undesirable in an
artificial leg, as it renders its support unstable."
Before reporting some of the facts which we have seen, or learned by
personal inquiry, we must be allowed, for the sake of convenience,
to exercise the privilege granted to all philosophical students, of
enlarging the nomenclature applicable to the subject of which we are
treating.
Man, according to the Sphinx, is successively a _quadruped_, a _biped_,
and a _triped_. But circumstances may change his natural conditions. If
he loses a leg, he becomes a _uniped_. If he loses both his legs, he
becomes a _nulliped_. If art replaces the loss of one limb with a
factitious substitute, he becomes a _ligniped_, or, if we wish to be
very precise, a _uni-ligniped_; two wooden legs entitle him to be called
a _biligniped_. Our terminology being accepted, we are ready to proceed.
To make ourselves more familiar with the working of the invention we are
considering, we have visited Mr. Palmer's establishments in Philadelphia
and Boston. The distinguished "Surgeon-Artist" is a man of fine person,
as we have said. But if he has any personal vanity, it does not betray
itself with regard to that portion of his organism which Nature
furnished him. There is some reason to think that Mr. Palmer is a little
ashamed of the lower limb which he brought into the world with him. At
least, if he follows the common rule and puts that which he considers
his best foot foremost, he evidently awards the preference to that which
was born of his brain over the one which he owes to his mother. He walks
as well as many do who have their natural limbs, though not so well as
some of his own patients. He puts his vegetable leg through many of the
movements which would seem to demand the contractile animal fibre. He
goes up and down stairs with very tolerable ease and despatch. Only when
he comes to _stand_ upon the human limb, we begin, to find that it is
not in all respects equal to the divine one. For a certain number of
seconds he can poise himself upon it; but Mr. Palmer, if he indulges
in verse, would hardly fill the Horatian complement of lines in that
attitude. In his anteroom were unipeds in different stages of their
second learning to walk as lignipeds. At first they move with a good
deal of awkwardness, but gradually the wooden limb seems to become, as
it were, penetrated by the nerves, and the intelligence to run downwards
until it reaches the last joint of the member.
Mr. Palmer, as we have incidentally mentioned, has a branch
establishment in Boston, to which also we have paid a visit, in order
to learn some of the details of the manufacture to which we had not
attended in our pleasant interview with the inventor. The antechamber
here, too, was the nursery of immature lignipeds, ready to exhibit their
growing accomplishments to the inquiring stranger. It almost seems as if
the artificial leg were the scholar, rather than the person who wears
it. The man does well enough, but the leg is stupid until practice has
taught it just what is expected from its various parts.
The polite Boston partner, who, if he were in want of a customer, would
almost persuade a man with two good legs to provide himself with a
third, carried us to the back part of the building, where legs are
organized.
The _willow_, which furnishes the charcoal for the gunpowder that blows
off limbs, is the wood chosen to supply the loss it has helped to
occasion. It is light, strong, does not warp or "check" much as many
other woods, and is, as the workmen say, _healthy_, that is, not
irritating to the parts with which it is in contact. Whether the
_salicine_ it may contain enters the pores and invigorates the system
may be a question for those who remember the drugs in the Sultan's
bat-handle and the remarkable cure they wrought. This wood is kept in
a dry-house with as much care as that intended for the manufacture of
pianos. It is thoroughly steamed also, before using.
The wood comes in rudely shaped blocks, as lasts are sent to the
factory, seeming to have been coarsely hewed out of the log. The
shaping, as we found to our surprise, is all done by hand. We had
expected to see great lathes, worked by steam-power, taking in a rough
stick and turning out a finished limb. But it is shaped very much as a
sculptor finishes his marble, with an eye to artistic effect,--not so
much in the view of the stranger, who does not look upon its naked
loveliness, as in that of the wearer, who is seduced by its harmonious
outlines into its purchase, and solaced with the consciousness that he
carries so much beauty and symmetry about with him. The hollowing-out of
the interior is done by wicked-looking blades and scoops at the end of
long stems, suggesting the thought of dentists' instruments as they
might have been in the days of the giants. The joints are most carefully
made, more particularly at the knee, where a strong bolt of steel passes
through the solid wood. Windows, oblong openings, are left in the sides
of the limb, to insure a good supply of air to the extremity of the
mutilated limb. Many persons are not aware that all parts of the surface
_breathe_ just as the lungs breathe, exhaling carbonic acid as well as
water, and taking in more or less oxygen.
One of the workmen, a pleasant-looking young fellow, was himself, we
were told, a ligniped. We begged him to give us a specimen of his
walking. He arose and walked rather slowly across the room and back.
"Once more," we said, not feeling quite sure which was Nature's leg and
which Mr. Palmer's. So he walked up and down the room again, until we
had satisfied ourselves which was the leg of willow and which that
of flesh and bone. It is not, perhaps, to the credit of our eyes or
observing powers, but it is a fact, that we deliberately selected _the
wrong leg_. No victim of the thimble-rigger's trickery was ever more
completely taken in than we were by the contrivance of the ingenious
Surgeon-Artist.
Our freely expressed admiration led to the telling of wonderful stories
about the doings of persons with artificial legs. One individual was
mentioned who _skated_ particularly well; another who _danced_ with zeal
and perseverance; and a third who must needs _swim_ in his leg, which
brought on a dropsical affection of the limb,--to which kind of
complaint the willow has, of course, a constitutional tendency,--and for
which it had to come to the infirmary where the diseases that wood is
heir to are treated.
But the most wonderful monuments of the great restorer's skill are the
patients who have lost both legs,--_nullipeds_, as presented to Mr.
Palmer, _bilignipeds_, as they walk forth again before the admiring
world, balanced upon their two new-born members. We have before us
delineations of six of these hybrids between the animal and vegetable
world. One of them was employed at a railway-station near this
(Atlantic) city, where he was often seen by a member of our own
household, whose testimony we are in the habit of considering superior
in veracity to the naked truth as commonly delivered. He walked about,
we are assured, a little slowly and stiffly, but in a way that hardly
attracted attention.
The inventor of the leg has not been contented to stop there. He has
worked for years upon the construction of an artificial _arm_, and has
at length succeeded in arranging a mechanism, which, if it cannot serve
a pianist or violinist, is yet equal to holding the reins in driving,
receiving fees for professional services, and similar easy labors.
Where Mr. Palmer means to stop in supplying bodily losses it would be
premature to say. We suppose the accidents happening occasionally from
the use of the guillotine are beyond his skill, and spare our readers
the lively remark suggested by the contrary hypothesis.
* * * * *
It is one of the signs of our advancing American civilization, that the
arts which preserve and restore the personal advantages necessary or
favorable to cultivated social life should have reached such perfection
among us. American dentists have achieved a reputation which has sent
them into the palaces of Europe to open the mouths of sovereigns and
princes as freely as the jockeys look into those of horses and colts.
Bad teeth, too common among us, help to breed good dentists, no doubt;
but besides this there is an absolute demand for a certain comeliness of
person throughout all the decent classes of our society. It is the same
standard of propriety in appearances which lays us open to the reproach
of caring too much for dress. If the national ear for music is not so
acute as that of some other peoples, the national eye for the harmonies
of form and color is better than we often find in older communities. We
have a right to claim that our sculptors and painters prove so much as
this for us. American taste was offended, outraged, by the odious "peg"
which the Old-World soldier or beggar was proud to show. We owe the
well-shaped, intelligent, docile limb, the half-reasoning willow of Mr.
Palmer, to the same sense of beauty and fitness which moulded the soft
outlines of the Indian Girl and the White Captive in the studio of his
namesake at Albany.
As we wean ourselves from the Old World, and become more and more
nationalized in our great struggle for existence as a free people, we
shall carry this aptness for the production of beautiful forms more and
more into common life, which demands first what is necessary and then
what is pleasing. It is but a step from the painter's canvas to the
weaver's loom, and the pictures which are leaving the easel to-day
will show themselves in the patterns that sweep the untidy sidewalks
to-morrow. The same plastic power which is showing itself in
the triumphs of American sculpture will reach the forms of our
household-utensils. The beans of Beverly shall yet be baked in vases
that Etruria might have envied, and the clay pipe of the Americanized
Milesian shall be a thing of beauty as well as a joy forever. We
are already pushing the plastic arts farther than many persons have
suspected. There is a small town not far from us where a million
dollars' worth of gold is annually beaten into ornaments for the
breasts, the fingers, the ears, the necks of women. Many a lady supposes
she is buying Parisian adornments, when _Attleborough_ could say to
her proudly, like Cornelia, "These are my jewels." The workmen of this
little town not only meet the tastes of the less fastidious classes, to
whom all that glisters is gold, but they shape the purest metal into
artistic and effective patterns. When the Koh-i-noor--the Mountain of
Light--was to be fashioned, it was found to be almost as formidable a
task as that of Xerxes, when he undertook to hew Mount Athos to the
shape of man. The great crystal was sent to Holland, as the only place
where it could be properly cut. We have lately seen a brilliant which,
if not a mountain of light, was yet a very respectable mound of
radiance, valued at some ten or twelve thousand dollars, cut in this
virgin settlement, and exposed in one of our shop-windows to tempt our
frugal villagers.
Monsieur Trousseau, Professor in the Medical School of Paris, delivered
a discursive lecture not long ago, in which he soared from the region
of drugs, his well-known special province, into the thin atmosphere
of aesthetics. It is the influence that surrounds his fortunate
fellow-citizens, he declares, which alone preserves their intellectual
supremacy. If a Parisian milliner, he says, remove to New York, she will
so degenerate in the course of a couple of years that the squaw of a
Choctaw chief would be ashamed to wear one of her bonnets.
Listen, O Parisian cockney, pecking among the brood most plethoric with
conceit, of all the coop-fed citizens who tread the pavements of earth's
many-chimneyed towns! America has made implements of husbandry which
out-mow and out-reap the world. She has contrived man-slaying engines
which kill people faster than any others. She has modelled the
wave-slicing clipper which outsails all your argosies and armadas.
She has revolutionized naval warfare once by the steamboat. She has
revolutionized it a second time by planting towers of iron on the
elephantine backs of the waves. She has invented the sewing-machine to
save the dainty fingers of your virtuous grisettes from uncongenial
toil, so that Fifine and Frétillon may have more leisure for
self-development. She has taught you a whole new system of labor in her
machinery for making watches and rifles. She has bestowed upon you and
all the world an anodyne which enables you to cut arms and legs off
without hurting the patient; and when his leg is off, she has given you
a true artist's limb for your cripple to walk upon, instead of the peg
on which he has stumped from the days of Guy de Chauliac to those of M.
Nelaton. She has been contriving well-shaped boots and shoes for the
very people who, if they were your countrymen, would be clumping about
in wooden _sabots_. In works of scientific industry, hardly to be looked
for among so new a people she has distanced your best artificers. The
microscopes made at Canastota, in the backwoods of New York, look in
vain for their rivals in Paris, and must challenge the best workmanship
of London before they can be approached in excellence. The great eye
that stares into the celestial spaces from its workshop in Cambridge,
dives deeper through their clouds of silvery dust than any instrument
mounted in your observatory in face of the Luxembourg. Our artisans
produce no Gobelin tapestries or Sèvres porcelain as yet; but when your
mobs have looted the Tuileries, our shopkeepers have bought up enough
specimens to serve them as patterns by-and-by.
All this is something for a nation which has hardly pulled up the stumps
out of its city market-places. It is sad to reflect that milliners, like
Burgundy, are spoiled by transportation to the headquarters of American
fashion. But as the best bonnet of the Empress's own artist would be
exploded with yells a couple of seasons after the time when it was the
rage, the Icarian professor's flight into the regions of rhetoric has
not led him to any very logical resting-place from which he can look
down on the aesthetic possibilities of New York or other Western cities
emerging from the semi-barbarous state.
We are not proud, of course, of any of the mechanical triumphs we
have won; they are well enough, and show--to borrow the words of a
distinguished American, whom, during his too brief career, we held
unrivalled by any experimenter in the Old World for the depth as well as
the daring of his investigations--that some things can be done as well
as others.
Our specialty is of somewhat larger scope. We profess to make men and
women out of human beings better than any of the joint-stock companies
called dynasties have done or can do it. We profess to make citizens out
of men,--not _citoyens_, but persons educated to question all privileges
asserted by others, and claim all rights belonging to themselves,--the
only way in which the infinitely most important party to the compact
between the governed and governing can avoid being cheated out of the
best rights inherent in human nature, as an experience the world has
seen almost enough of has proved. We are in trouble just now, on account
of a neglected hereditary _melanosis_, as Monsieur Trousseau might call
it. When we recover from the social and political convulsion it has
produced, and eliminate the _materies morbi_,--and both these events are
only matters of time,--perhaps we shall have leisure to breed our own
milliners. If not, there will probably be refugees enough from the Old
World, who have learned the fashions in courts, and will be glad to turn
their knowledge to a profitable use for the benefit of their republican
patronesses in New York and Boston.
We have run away from our subject farther than we intended at starting;
but an essay on legs could hardly avoid the rambling tendency which
naturally belongs to these organs.
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