The apparatus herewith illustrated consists of a wooden base, which
may be bolted to the floor, and which supports two wooden uprights, to
which is affixed the apparatus designed to exercise the legs. The
apparatus for exercising the arms is mounted upon a second frame that
slides up and down the wooden supports. It is fixed in position at any
height by means of two screws.
[Illustration: APPARATUS FOR EXERCISING THE MUSCLES.]
The apparatus for exercising the legs, as well as the one for the
arms, consists essentially of a fly wheel mounted upon an axle
extending to the second upright and bent into the form of a crank in
the center. The fly wheel is provided with a winch whose arm is
capable of elongation in order to accommodate it to the reach of the
sound limb.
The apparatus for the legs is arranged in a contrary direction, that
is to say, the wheel is on the opposite side of the frame, and upon
the fixed uprights. It is really a velocipede, one of the pedals of
which is movable upon the winch, and is capable of running from the
axle to the extremity, as in the upper apparatus. This pedal has the
form of a shoe, and is provided with two straps to keep the foot in
place and cause it to follow the pedal in its rotary motion. A movable
seat, capable of rising and descending and moving backward and
forward, according to the leg that needs treatment, is fixed back of
the apparatus.
The operation is as follows: Suppose that the atrophied arm is the
left one. The invalid, facing the apparatus, grasps the movable handle
on the crank with his left hand, and revolves the winch with his
right. The left hand being thus carried along, the arm is submitted to
a motion that obliges it to elongate and contract alternately, and the
result is an extension of the muscles which strengthens them.
The apparatus, which is as simple as it is ingenious, can, it is true,
be applied only when one of the two limbs, arm or leg, is diseased,
the other being always necessary to set the apparatus in motion; but,
even reduced to such conditions, it is destined to render numerous
services in cases of paralysis, atrophy, contusions, etc.--_Moniteur
des Inventions Industrielles._
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