From Luther Holden, F.R.C.S., Senior Lecturer on Anatomy at Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Aug. 28th, 1865.
Since our last interview I have often thought and talked about the practical effect of your ‘Gymnastic exercises for the Fingers.’ On anatomical and physiological grounds, it is quite certain that these exercises are admirably calculated to liberate the ligaments of the fingers, and to give a freer play and increased vigour to those muscles upon which many of the varied and more independent movements of the fingers depend.
“I have no doubt whatever that such exercises will be of the greatest service in educating the fingers of musicians, and thereby save them a great deal of time and trouble.”
From Richard Quain, F.R.S., Professor of Chemical Surgery in University College; Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen.
August 2nd, 1865.
I write to you upon the important facts you were good enough to communicate to me to-day, and to explain how they may be accounted for scientifically. Your proposal to exercise the hand and fingers, and your plan of systematically carrying out the proposal so as to be beneficial to musicians, are both new to me. Judging on principle, and from a knowledge of what occurs in other parts of the body, I have no doubt that the system must be useful, for it will give increased mobility to the fingers and increased development and power to the small muscles—Lumbricales (the musculi fidicinales of Cowper), and metacarpal interosseous, as well as indeed to the general flexors and extensors of the hand. In short, the exercises you propose will be to the hand and fingers what the ordinary gymnastic exercises are to the rest of the limbs. The result will be useful wherever the free play and vigour of the fingers are needed; would therefore, I anticipate, be especially advantageous to musicians, and I am inclined to add to painters and to writers also.” ...