PHYSIOLOGIC AND FUNCTIONAL ANOMALIES. 10 page

years been diminishing, and many of the older feats are forbidden by

law.

Jumpers and acrobatic tumblers have been popular from the earliest

time. By the aid of springing boards and weights in their hands, the

old jumpers covered great distances. Phayllus of Croton is accredited

with jumping the incredible distance of 55 feet, and we have the

authority of Eustache and Tzetzes that this jump is genuine. In the

writings of many Greek and Roman historians are chronicled jumps of

about 50 feet by the athletes; if they are true, the modern jumpers

have greatly degenerated. A jump of over 20 feet to-day is considered

very clever, the record being 29 feet seven inches with weights, and 23

feet eight inches without weights, although much greater distances have

been jumped with the aid of apparatus, but never an approximation to 50

feet. The most surprising of all these athletes are the tumblers, who

turn somersaults over several animals arranged in a row. Such feats are

not only the most amusing sights of a modern circus, but also the most

interesting as well. The agility of these men is marvelous, and the

force with which they throw themselves in the air apparently enables

them to defy gravity. In London, Paris, or New York one may see these

wonderful tumblers and marvel at the capabilities of human physical

development.

In September, 1895, M. F. Sweeney, an American amateur, at Manhattan

Field in New York jumped six feet 5 5/8 inches high in the running high

jump without weights. With weights, J. H. Fitzpatrick at Oak Island,

Mass., jumped six feet six inches high. The record for the running high

kick is nine feet eight inches, a marvelous performance, made by C. C.

Lee at New Haven, Conn., March 19, 1887.

Extraordinary physical development and strength has been a grand means

of natural selection in the human species. As Guyot-Daubes remarks, in

prehistoric times, when our ancestors had to battle against hunger,

savage beasts, and their neighbors, and when the struggle for existence

was so extremely hard, the strong man alone resisted and the weak

succumbed. This natural selection has been perpetuated almost to our

day; during the long succession of centuries, the chief or the master

was selected on account of his being the strongest, or the most valiant

in the combat. Originally, the cavaliers, the members of the nobility,

were those who were noted for their courage and strength, and to them

were given the lands of the vanquished. Even in times other than those

of war, disputes of succession were settled by jousts and tourneys.

This fact is seen in the present day among the lower animals, who in

their natural state live in tribes; the leader is usually the

strongest, the wisest, and the most courageous.

The strong men of all times have excited the admiration of their

fellows and have always been objects of popular interest. The Bible

celebrates the exploits of Samson of the tribe of Dan. During his

youth he, single handed, strangled a lion; with the jaw-bone of an ass

he is said to have killed 1000 Philistines and put the rest to flight.

At another time during the night he transported from the village of

Gaza enormous burdens and placed them on the top of a mountain.

Betrayed by Delilah, he was delivered into the hands of his enemies and

employed in the most servile labors. When old and blind he was attached

to the columns of an edifice to serve as an object of public ridicule;

with a violent effort he overturned the columns, destroying himself and

3000 Philistines.

In the Greek mythology we find a great number of heroes, celebrated for

their feats of strength and endurance. Many of them have received the

name of Hercules; but the most common of these is the hero who was

supposed to be the son of Jupiter and Alemena. He was endowed with

prodigious strength by his father, and was pursued with unrelenting

hatred by Juno. In his infancy he killed with his hands the serpents

which were sent to devour him. The legends about him are innumerable.

He was said to have been armed with a massive club, which only he was

able to carry. The most famous of his feats were the twelve labors,

with which all readers of mythology are familiar. Hercules,

personified, meant to the Greeks physical force as well as strength,

generosity, and bravery, and was equivalent to the Assyrian Hercules.

The Gauls had a Hercules-Pantopage, who, in addition to the ordinary

qualities attributed to Hercules, had an enormous appetite.

As late as the sixteenth century, and in a most amusing and picturesque

manner, Rabelais has given us the history of Gargantua, and even to

this day, in some regions, there are groups of stones which are

believed by ignorant people to have been thrown about by Gargantua in

his play. In their citations the older authors often speak of battles,

and in epic ballads of heroes with marvelous strength. In the army of

Charlemagne, after Camerarius, and quoted by Guyot-Daubes (who has made

an extensive collection of the literature on this subject and to whom

the authors are indebted for much information), there was found a giant

named Oenother, a native of a village in Suabia, who performed

marvelous feats of strength. In his history of Bavaria Aventin speaks

of this monster. To Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, the legends

attributed prodigious strength; and, dying in the valley of

Roncesveaux, he broke his good sword "Durandal" by striking it against

a rock, making a breach, which is stilled called the "Breche de

Roland." Three years before his death, on his return from Palestine,

Christopher, Duke of Bavaria, was said to have lifted to his shoulders

a stone which weighed more than 340 pounds. Louis de Boufflers,

surnamed the "Robust," who lived in 1534, was noted for his strength

and agility. When he placed his feet together, one against the other,

he could find no one able to disturb them. He could easily bend and

break a horseshoe with his hands, and could seize an ox by the tail and

drag it against its will. More than once he was said to have carried a

horse on his shoulders. According to Guyot-Daubes there was, in the

last century, a Major Barsaba who could seize the limb of a horse and

fracture its bone. There was a tale of his lifting an iron anvil, in a

blacksmith's forge, and placing it under his coat.

To the Emperor Maximilian I was ascribed enormous strength; even in his

youth, when but a simple patriot, he vanquished, at the games given by

Severus, 16 of the most vigorous wrestlers, and accomplished this feat

without stopping for breath. It is said that this feat was the origin

of his fortune. Among other celebrated persons in history endowed with

uncommon strength were Edmund "Ironsides," King of England; the Caliph

Mostasem-Billah; Baudouin, "Bras-de-Fer," Count of Flanders; William

IV, called by the French "Fier-a-Bras," Duke of Aquitaine; Christopher,

son of Albert the Pious, Duke of Bavaria; Godefroy of Bouillon; the

Emperor Charles IV; Scanderbeg; Leonardo da Vinci; Marshal Saxe; and

the recently deceased Czar of Russia, Alexander III.

Turning now to the authentic modern Hercules, we have a man by the name

of Eckeberg, born in Anhalt, and who traveled under the name of

"Samson." He was exhibited in London, and performed remarkable feats of

strength. He was observed by the celebrated Desaguliers (a pupil of

Newton) in the commencement of the last century, who at that time was

interested in the physiologic experiments of strength and agility.

Desaguliers believed that the feats of this new Samson were more due to

agility than strength. One day, accompanied by two of his confreres,

although a man of ordinary strength, he duplicated some of Samson's

feats, and followed his performance by a communication to the Royal

Society. One of his tricks was to resist the strength of five or six

men or of two horses. Desaguliers claimed that this was entirely due to

the position taken. This person would lift a man by one foot, and bear

a heavy weight on his chest when resting with his head and two feet on

two chairs. By supporting himself with his arms he could lift a piece

of cannon attached to his feet.

A little later Desaguliers studied an individual in London named Thomas

Topham, who used no ruse in his feats and was not the skilful

equilibrist that the German Samson was, his performances being merely

the results of abnormal physical force. He was about thirty years old,

five feet ten inches in height and well proportioned, and his muscles

well developed, the strong ligaments showing under the skin. He ignored

entirely the art of appearing supernaturally strong, and some of his

feats were rendered difficult by disadvantageous positions. In the feat

of the German--resisting the force of several men or horses--Topham

exhibited no knowledge of the principles of physics, like that of his

predecessor, but, seated on the ground and putting his feet against two

stirrups, he was able to resist the traction of a single horse; when he

attempted the same feat against two horses he was severely strained and

wounded about the knees. According to Desaguliers, if Topham had taken

the advantageous positions of the German Samson, he could have resisted

not only two, but four horses. On another occasion, with the aid of a

bridle passed about his neck, he lifted three hogsheads full of water,

weighing 1386 pounds. If he had utilized the force of his limbs and his

loins, like the German, he would have been able to perform far more

difficult feats. With his teeth he could lift and maintain in a

horizontal position a table over six feet long, at the extremity of

which he would put some weight. Two of the feet of the table he rested

on his knees. He broke a cord five cm. in diameter, one part of which

was attached to a post and the other to a strap passed under his

shoulder. He was able to carry in his hands a rolling-pin weighing 800

pounds, about twice the weight a strong man is considered able to lift.

Tom Johnson was another strong man who lived in London in the last

century, but he was not an exhibitionist, like his predecessors. He was

a porter on the banks of the Thames, his duty being to carry sacks of

wheat and corn from the wharves to the warehouses. It was said that

when one of his comrades was ill, and could not provide support for his

wife and children, Johnson assumed double duty, carrying twice the

load. He could seize a sack of wheat, and with it execute the movements

of a club-swinger, and with as great facility. He became quite a

celebrated boxer, and, besides his strength, he soon demonstrated his

powers of endurance, never seeming fatigued after a lively bout. The

porters of Paris were accustomed to lift and carry on their shoulders

bags of flour weighing 159 kilograms (350 pounds) and to mount stairs

with them. Johnson, on hearing this, duplicated the feat with three

sacks, and on one occasion attempted to carry four, and resisted this

load some little time. These four sacks weighed 1400 pounds.

Some years since there was a female Hercules who would get on her hands

and knees under a carriage containing six people, and, forming an arch

with her body, she would lift it off the ground, an attendant turning

the wheels while in the air to prove that they were clear from the

ground.

Guyot-Daubes considers that one of the most remarkable of all the men

noted for their strength was a butcher living in the mountains of

Margeride, known as Lapiada (the extraordinary). This man, whose

strength was legendary in the neighboring country, one day seized a mad

bull that had escaped from his stall and held him by the horns until

his attendants could bind him. For amusement he would lie on his belly

and allow several men to get on his back; with this human load he would

rise to the erect position. One of Lapiada's great feats was to get

under a cart loaded with hay and, forming an arch with his body, raise

it from the ground, then little by little he would mount to his

haunches, still holding the cart and hay. Lapiada terminated his

Herculean existence in attempting a mighty effort. Having charged

himself alone with the task of placing a heavy tree-trunk in a cart, he

seized it, his muscles stiffened, but the blood gushed from his mouth

and nostrils, and he fell, overcome at last. The end of Lapiada

presents an analogue to that of the celebrated athlete, Polydamas, who

was equally the victim of too great confidence in his muscular force,

and who died crushed by the force that he hoped to maintain. Figures

181 and 183 portray the muscular development of an individual noted for

his feats of strength, and who exhibited not long since.

In recent years we have had Sebastian Miller, whose specialty was

wrestling and stone-breaking; Samson, a recent English exhibitionist,

Louis Cyr, and Sandow, who, in addition to his remarkable strength and

control over his muscles, is a very clever gymnast. Sandow gives an

excellent exposition of the so-called "checkerboard" arrangement of the

muscular fibers of the lower thoracic and abdominal regions, and in a

brilliant light demonstrates his extraordinary power over his muscles,

contracting muscles ordinarily involuntary in time with music, a feat

really more remarkable than his exhibition of strength. Figures 182

and 184 show the beautiful muscular development of this remarkable man.

Joseph Pospischilli, a convict recently imprisoned in the Austrian

fortress of Olen, surprised the whole Empire by his wonderful feats of

strength. One of his tricks was to add a fifth leg to a common table

(placing the useless addition in the exact center) and then balance it

with his teeth while two full-grown gipsies danced on it, the music

being furnished by a violinist seated in the middle of the

well-balanced platform. One day when the prison in which this Hercules

was confined was undergoing repairs, he picked up a large carpenter's

bench with his teeth and held it balanced aloft for nearly a minute.

Since being released from the Olen prison, Pospischilli and his cousin,

another local "strong man" named Martenstine, have formed a combination

and are now starring Southern Europe, performing all kinds of startling

feats of strength. Among other things they have had a 30-foot bridge

made of strong timbers, which is used in one of their great muscle

acts. This bridge has two living piers--Pospischilli acting as one and

Martenstine the other. Besides supporting this monstrous structure

(weight, 1866 pounds) upon their shoulders, these freaks of superhuman

strength allow a team of horses and a wagon loaded with a ton of

cobble-stones to be driven across it.

It is said that Selig Whitman, known as "Ajax," a New York policeman,

has lifted 2000 pounds with his hands and has maintained 450 pounds

with his teeth. This man is five feet 8 1/2 inches tall and weighs 162

pounds. His chest measurement is 40 inches, the biceps 17 inches, that

of his neck 16 1/2 inches, the forearm 11, the wrist 9 1/2, the thigh

23, and the calf 17.

One of the strongest of the "strong women" is Madame Elise, a

Frenchwoman, who performs with her husband. Her greatest feat is the

lifting of eight men weighing altogether about 1700 pounds. At her

performances she supports across her shoulders a 700-pound dumb-bell,

on each side of which a person is suspended.

Miss Darnett, the "singing strong lady," extends herself upon her hands

and feet, face uppermost, while a stout platform, with a semicircular

groove for her neck, is fixed upon her chest, abdomen, and thighs by

means of a waist-belt which passes through brass receivers on the under

side of the board. An ordinary upright piano is then placed on the

platform by four men; a performer mounts the platform and plays while

the "strong lady" sings a love song while supporting possibly half a

ton.

Strength of the Jaws.--There are some persons who exhibit extraordinary

power of the jaw. In the curious experiments of Regnard and Blanchard

at the Sorbonne, it was found that a crocodile weighing about 120

pounds exerted a force between its jaws at a point corresponding to the

insertion of the masseter muscles of 1540 pounds; a dog of 44 pounds

exerted a similar force of 363 pounds.

It is quite possible that in animals like the tiger and lion the force

would equal 1700 or 1800 pounds. The anthropoid apes can easily break a

cocoanut with their teeth, and Guyot-Daubes thinks that possibly a

gorilla has a jaw-force of 200 pounds. A human adult is said to exert a

force of from 45 to 65 pounds between his teeth, and some individuals

exceed this average as much as 100 pounds. In Buffon's experiments he

once found a Frenchman who could exert a force of 534 pounds with his

jaws.

In several American circuses there have been seen women who hold

themselves by a strap between their teeth while they are being hauled

up to a trapeze some distance from the ground. A young mulatto girl by

the name of "Miss Kerra" exhibited in the Winter Circus in Paris;

suspended from a trapeze, she supported a man at the end of a strap

held between her teeth, and even permitted herself to be turned round

and round.

She also held a cannon in her teeth while it was fired. This feat has

been done by several others. According to Guyot-Daubes, at Epernay in

1882, while a man named Bucholtz, called "the human cannon," was

performing this feat, the cannon, which was over a yard long and

weighed nearly 200 pounds, burst and wounded several of the spectators.

There was another Hercules in Paris, who with his teeth lifted and held

a heavy cask of water on which was seated a man and varying weights,

according to the size of his audience, at the same time keeping his

hands occupied with other weights. Figure 185 represents a well-known

modern exhibitionist lifting with his teeth a cask on which are seated

four men. The celebrated Mlle. Gauthier, an actress of the

Comedie-Francais, had marvelous power of her hands, bending coins,

rolling up silver plate, and performing divers other feats. Major

Barsaba had enormous powers of hand and fingers. He could roll a silver

plate into the shape of a goblet. Being challenged by a Gascon, he

seized the hand of his unsuspecting adversary in the ordinary manner of

salutation and crushed all the bones of the fingers, thus rendering

unnecessary any further trial of strength.

It is said that Marshal Saxe once visited a blacksmith ostensibly to

have his horse shod, and seeing no shoe ready he took a bar of iron,

and with his hands fashioned it into a horseshoe. There are Japanese

dentists who extract teeth with their wonderfully developed fingers.

There are stories of a man living in the village of Cantal who received

the sobriquet of "La Coupia" (The Brutal). He would exercise his

function as a butcher by strangling with his fingers the calves and

sheep, instead of killing them in the ordinary manner. It is said that

one day, by placing his hands on the shoulders of the strong man of a

local fair, he made him faint by the pressure exerted by his fingers.

Manual strangulation is a well-known crime and is quite popular in some

countries. The Thugs of India sometimes murdered their victims in this

way. Often such force is exerted by the murderer's fingers as to

completely fracture the cricoid cartilage.

In viewing the feats of strength of the exhibitionist we must bear in

consideration the numerous frauds perpetrated. A man of extraordinary

strength sometimes finds peculiar stone, so stratified that he is able

to break it with the force he can exert by a blow from the hand alone,

although a man of ordinary strength would try in vain. In most of these

instances, if one were to take a piece of the exhibitionist's stone, he

would find that a slight tap of the hammer would break it. Again, there

are many instances in which the stone has been found already separated

and fixed quite firmly together, placing it out of the power of an

ordinary man to break, but which the exhibitionist finds within his

ability. This has been the solution of the feats of many of the

individuals who invite persons to send them marked stones to use at

their performances. By skilfully arranging stout twine on the hands, it

is surprising how easily it is broken, and there are many devices and

tricks to deceive the public, all of which are more or less used by

"strong men."

The recent officially recorded feats of strength that stand unequaled

in the last decade are as follows:--

Weight-lifting.--Hands alone 1571 1/4 pounds, done by C. G. Jefferson,

an amateur, at Clinton, Mass December 10, 1890; with harness, 3239

pounds, by W B. Curtis, at New York December 20 1868; Louis Cyr, at

Berthierville, Can., October 1, 1888, pushed up 3536 pounds of pig-iron

with his back, arms, and legs.

Dumb-bells.--H. Pennock, in New York, 1870, put up a 10-pound dumb-bell

8431 times in four hours thirty-four minutes; by using both hands to

raise it to the shoulder, and then using one hand alone, R. A. Pennell,

in New York, January 31, 1874, managed to put up a bell weighing 201

pounds 5 ounces; and Eugene Sandow, at London, February 11, 1891,

surpassed this feat with a 250-pound bell.

Throwing 16-pound hammer.--J. S. Mitchell, at Travers Island, N. Y.,

October 8, 1892, made a record-throw of 145 feet 3/4 inch.

Putting 16-pound Shot.--George R. Gray, at Chicago, September 16, 1893,

made the record of 47 feet.

Throwing 50-pound Weight.--J. S. Mitchell, at New York, September 22,

1894, made the distance record of 35 feet 10 inches; and at Chicago,

September 16, 1893, made the height record of 15 feet 4 1/2 inches.

The class of people commonly known as contortionists by the laxity of

their muscles and ligaments are able to dislocate or preternaturally

bend their joints. In entertainments of an arena type and even in what

are now called "variety performances" are to be seen individuals of

this class. These persons can completely straddle two chairs, and do

what they call "the split;" they can place their foot about their neck

while maintaining the upright position; they can bend almost double at

the waist in such a manner that the back of the head will touch the

calves, while the legs are perpendicular with the ground; they can

bring the popliteal region over their shoulders and in this position

walk on their hands; they can put themselves in a narrow barrel; eat

with a fork attached to a heel while standing on their hands, and

perform divers other remarkable and almost incredible feats. Their

performances are genuine, and they are real physiologic curiosities.

Plate 6 represents two well-known contortionists in their favorite

feats.

Wentworth, the oldest living contortionist, is about seventy years of

age, but seems to have lost none of his earlier sinuosity. His chief

feat is to stow himself away in a box 23 X 29 X 16 inches. When inside,

six dozen wooden bottles of the same size and shape as those which

ordinarily contain English soda water are carefully stowed away, packed

in with him, and the lid slammed down. He bestows upon this act the

curious and suggestive name of "Packanatomicalization."

Another class of individuals are those who can either partially or

completely dislocate the major articulations of the body. Many persons

exhibit this capacity in their fingers. Persons vulgarly called "double

jointed" are quite common.

Charles Warren, an American contortionist, has been examined by several

medical men of prominence and descriptions of him have appeared from

time to time in prominent medical journals. When he was but a child he

was constantly tumbling down, due to the heads of the femurs slipping

from the acetabula, but reduction was always easy. When eight years old

he joined a company of acrobats and strolling performers, and was

called by the euphonious title of "the Yankee dish-rag." His muscular

system was well-developed, and, like Sandow, he could make muscles act

in concert or separately.

He could throw into energetic single action the biceps, the supinator

longus, the radial extensors, the platysma myoides, and many other

muscles. When he "strings," as he called it, the sartorius, that ribbon

muscle shows itself as a tight cord, extending from the front of the

iliac spine to the inner side of the knee. Another trick was to leave

flaccid that part of the serratus magnus which is attached to the

inferior angle of the scapula whilst he roused energetic contraction in

the rhomboids. He could displace his muscles so that the lower angles

of the scapulae projected and presented the appearance historically

attributed to luxation of the scapula.

Warren was well informed on surgical landmarks and had evidently been a

close student of Sir Astley Cooper's classical illustrations of

dislocations. He was able so to contract his abdominal muscles that the

aorta could be distinctly felt with the fingers. In this feat nearly

all the abdominal contents were crowded beneath the diaphragm. On the

other hand, he could produce a phantom abdominal tumor by driving the

coils of the intestine within a peculiar grasp of the rectus and

oblique muscles. The "growth" was rounded, dull on percussion, and

looked as if an exploratory incision or puncture would be advisable for

diagnosis.

By extraordinary muscular power and extreme laxity of his ligaments, he

simulated all the dislocations about the hip joint. Sometimes he

produced actual dislocation, but usually he said he could so distort

his muscles as to imitate in the closest degree the dislocations. He

could imitate the various forms of talipes, in such a way as to deceive

an expert. He dislocated nearly every joint in the body with great

facility. It was said that he could contract at will both pillars of

the fauces. He could contract his chest to 34 inches and expand it to

41 inches.

Warren weighed 150 pounds, was a total abstainer, and was the father of

two children, both of whom could readily dislocate their hips.

In France in 1886 there was shown a man who was called "l'homme

protee," or protean man. He had an exceptional power over his muscles.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 701