The human foot and the human hand

by George Murray Humphry

Fig. [45]. Gorilla.

In the great ape called the Gorilla, which is found in the south-western part of Africa, and of which many specimens have now been sent to this Country, the hind-hand is of great size and strength, as may be seen in the accompanying drawing made from a stuffed specimen in the British Museum. The lower part of the leg is also very thick, owing to the size of the muscles which move the great toe and the other digits, and which enable them to give a most powerful grasp. So strong and savage is the creature that all efforts to capture one alive, when full-grown, have, hitherto, failed. He is said to give evidence of his strength of hand and of his amiable propensities in the following way. He swings by his fore-hands from the trees, and, letting himself down quietly by them, watches an opportunity of seizing by the neck, with his huge hind-hand, some unwary Negro who may be passing by, draws him up, and holds him with vice-like grasp, till his struggles have ceased, and then drops him a strangled corpse to the ground.

Most of the characters above mentioned as distinctive of the human foot—such as its compactness and strength, the height of the plantar arch, the shortness of the toes—are, like the size of the calf, most marked in the higher members of the human family, in those, that is to say, who are gifted with the highest intelligence. Thus the formation of the foot is found to have a correspondence with the formation of the head, and may, like it, be, to a certain extent, taken, as I have before remarked, to be an index of intellectual, as well as of physical, capacity. The relation between the intellectual power and the physical conformation of man, which is here exemplified, and which is maintained throughout the frame, is a subject of extreme interest, and is one which has not attracted the attention of anatomists and ethnologists so much as it deserves.

To what secondary causes this harmonious adaptation of body to mind may be due, we cannot clearly tell; but we can see in it a provision for giving physical ascendancy to superior intellect. And it is most gratifying to be able to derive, as we may do, from this as well as from the observation of the past and the present, the assurance that the cultivation of the mind, provided its moral tone be preserved and proper sanitary precautions be taken, is not likely to be attended with any deterioration of the body. On the contrary, we have good reason to believe that the present civilized nations of the earth, with their higher mental culture, are inferior to none of their predecessors in the qualities of the body; surely soldiers never maintained a hand-to-hand struggle better than the victors at Inkermann; and we know that the civilized nations are physically superior to most of the uncivilized. We have good ground, therefore, to hope that the extension of education and commerce will be productive, on the whole, of an improvement of the physical condition of the species.

Sir James Emerson Tennent says that the Veddahs, or aboriginal inhabitants of Ceylon, use the foot in drawing the bow. They sit down, place the toe against it, and draw the string with the hand; and some of the American Indians appear to have used both feet in the same way. These Veddahs furnish a good illustration of the low physical condition which is usually associated with absence of mental culture. They are described as in a singularly degraded state. “They have scarcely any language, no knowledge of God, nor of a future state, no temples, no idols, no altars, prayers, or charms; and, in short, no instinct of worship, except it be some addiction to ceremonies, analogous to devil worship, to avert storms, lightning, and sickness. All presented the same characteristics of wretchedness and dejection—projecting mouths, prominent teeth, flattened noses, stunted stature, and other evidences of the physical depravity which is the usual consequence of hunger and ignorance. The children were unsightly objects, entirely naked, with misshapen joints, huge heads, and protuberant stomachs. The women were the most repulsive specimens of humanity I have ever seen in any country.”

The Proportions of the Limbs.

A few years ago I took the measurements of numerous skeletons which I found in the museums in France, Germany, and England, and made the following table to shew the proportions of the several parts.

The length of the foot and hand is in all somewhat greater than it should be, in consequence of the bones composing them being usually less closely articulated in the artificial skeleton than they are in nature.

From this it appears that the limbs of Man differ from those of the Ape, chiefly, in the proportionate length of the thigh and arm, and in the shortness of the foot and hand. And it will be seen that, in both these particulars, the Negro differs from the European and exhibits some approximation to the Ape.

MEASUREMENTS OF SKELETONS (IN INCHES).