The human foot and the human hand

by George Murray Humphry

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.