C|e ¥)um;m Htfeel, fa JSphes anb Jfelte, 
AN ARTICLE BY 
PROF. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
IX THE 
ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 
MAY, 1 8 6 3. 
PUBLISHED BY 
MESSRS, TICKXOR & FIELDS, BOSTON. 
REPUBLISHED BY PERMISSION 
OF 
TIIE AUTHOR, AND PUBLISHERS, 
„ T 
B, FRANK, PALMER, 
SURGEON-ARTIST, 
PHILADELPHIA. 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by Ticknor & Fields, in the Clerk’s Office of the 
District Court of the District of Massachusetts. THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES, 
The starting-point of this paper was 
a desire to call attention to certain 
remarkable American Inventions, 
especially to one class of mechanical 
contrivances, which, at the present time, 
assumes a vast importance, and inte- 
rests great multitudes. The limbs of 
our friends and countrymen are a part 
of the melancholy harvest which War 
is sweeping down with Dahlgren’s 
mowing-machine and the patent reap- 
ers of Springfield and Hartford. The 
admirable contrivances of an American 
inventor, prized as they were in ordi- 
nary times, have risen into the charac- 
ter of great national blessings since 
the necessity for them has become so 
widely felt. While the weapons that 
have gone from Mr. Colt’s armories 
have been carrying death to friend and 
foe, the beneficent and ingenious inven- 
tions of Mr. Palmer have been repair- 
ing the losses inflicted by the imple- 
ments of war. 
The study of the artificial limbs 
which owe their perfection to his skill 
and long-continued labor has led us a 
little beyond its first object, and finds 
its natural prelude in some remarks on 
the natural limbs and their movements. 
We should not tell the whole truth, 
if we did not own that we have for a 
long time been lying in wait for a 
chance to say something about the me- 
chanism of walking, because we thought 
we could add something to what is 
known about it from a new source, 
accessible only within the last few 
years, and never, so far as we know, 
employed for its elucidation, namely, 
the instantaneous photograph. 
The two accomplishments common 
to all mankind are walking and talk- 
ing. Simple as they seem, they are 
yet acquired with vast labor, and very 
rarely understood in any clear way by 
those who practise them with perfect 
ease and unconscious skill. 
Talking seems the hardest to compre- 
hend. Yet it has been clearly explain- 
ed and successfully imitated by artificial 
contrivances. We know that the moist 
membranous edges of a narrow crevice 
(the glottis) vibrate as the reed of a 4 
THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
clarionet vibrates, and thus produce the 
human Meat. We narrow or widen or 
check or stop the flow of this sound 
by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and 
thus articulate, or break into joints, 
the even current of sound. The sound 
varies with the degree and kind of 
interruption, as the “babble” of the 
brook, with the shape and size of its im- 
pediments,—pebbles, or rocks, or dams. 
To whisper, is to articulate without 
Meating, or vocalizing; to coo as babies 
do is to bleat or vocalize -without arti- 
culating. Machines are easily made 
that bleat not unlike human beings. 
A bit of India-rubber tube tied round 
a piece of glass tube is one of the sim- 
plest voice-uttering contrivances. To 
make a machine that articulates is not 
so easy; but we remember Maelzel’s 
wooden children, which said, “Papa” 
and “Mama;” and more elaborate and 
successful speaking machines have, we 
believe, been since constructed. 
But no man has been able to make a 
figure that can walk. Of all the auto- 
mata imitating men or animals moving, 
there is not one in which the legs are 
the true sources of motion. So said the 
Webers* more than twenty years ago, 
and it is as true now as then. These 
authors, after a profound experimental 
and mathematical investigation of the 
mechanism of animal locomotion, recog- 
nize the fact that our knowledge is not 
yet advanced enough to hope to succeed 
in making real walking machines. But 
they conceive that the time may come 
hereafter when colossal figures will be 
constructed whose giant strides will 
not be arrested by the obstacles which 
are impassable to wheeled conveyances. 
* Traite de la Mechanique des Organes de 
la Locomotion. Translated from the German 
in the Encyclopedic Jlnatomique. Paris, 1843. 
We wish to give our readers as clear 
an idea as possible of that wonderful 
art of balanced vertical progression which 
they have practised, as M. Jourdain talk- 
ed prose, for so many years, without 
knowing what a marvellous accomplish- 
ment they had mastered. We shall have 
to begin with a few simple anatomical 
data. 
The foot is arched both longitudinal- 
ly and transversely, so as to give it elas- 
ticity, and thus break the sudden shock 
when the weight of the body is thrown 
upon it. The ankle-joint is a loose 
hinge, and the great muscles of the calf 
can straighten the foot out so far that 
practised dancers walk on the tips of 
their toes. The knee is another hinge- 
joint, which allows the leg to bend freely, 
hut not to be carried beyond a straight 
line in the other direction. Its further 
forward movement is checked by two 
very powerful cords in the interior of the 
joint, which cross each other like the let- 
ter X, and are hence called the crucial 
ligaments. The upper ends of the thigh- 
bones are almost globes, which are re- 
ceived into the deep cup-like cavities 
of the liaunch-bones. They are tied to 
these last so loosely, that, if their liga- 
ments alone held them, they would be 
half out of their sockets in many posi- 
tions of the lower limbs. But here comes 
in a simple and admirable contrivance. 
The smooth, rounded head of the thigh- 
bone, moist with glairy fluid, fits so per- 
fectly into the smooth, rounded cavity 
which receives it, that it holds firmly 
by suction, or atmospheric pressure. It 
takes a hard pull to draw it out after all 
the ligaments are cut, and then it comes 
with a smack like a tight cork from a 
bottle. Holding in this way by the close 
apposition of two polished surfaces, the 
lower extremity swings freely forward THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
5 
and backward like a pendulum, if we 
give it a cliance, as is shown by stand- 
ing on a chair upon the other limb, and 
moving the pendant one out of the ver- 
tical line. The force with which it 
swings depends upon its weight, and 
this is much greater than we might at 
first suppose; for our limbs not only 
carry themselves, but our bodies also, 
with a sense of lightness rather than of 
weight, when we are in good condition. 
Accident sometimes makes us aware 
how heavy our limbs are. An officer, 
whose arm was shattered by a ball in 
one of our late battles, told us that the 
dead weight of the helpless member 
seemed to drag him down to the earth ; 
he could hardly carry it; it “ weighed 
a ton,” to his feeling, as he said. 
In ordinary walking, a man’s lower 
extremity swings essentially by its own 
weight, requiring little muscular effort 
to help it. So heavy a body easily over- 
comes all impediments from clothing, 
even in the sex least favored in its cos- 
tume. But if a man’s legs are pendu- 
lums, then a short man’s legs will swing 
quicker than a tall man’s, and he will 
take more steps to a minute, qjlier things 
being equal. Thus there is a natural 
rhythm to a man’s walk, depending on 
the length of his legs, which beat more 
or less rapidly as they are longer or 
shorter, like metronomes differently ad- 
justed, or the pendulums of different 
time-keepers. Commodore Nutt is to 
M. Biliin in this respect as a little, fast- 
ticking mantel-clock is to an old-fash- 
ioned, solemn-clicking, upright time- 
piece. 
The mathematical formulae in which 
the Messrs. Weber embody their results 
would hardly be instructive to most of 
our readers. The figures of their Atlas 
would serve our purpose better, had v?e 
not means of coming nearer to the 
truth than even their careful studies 
enabled them to do. We have selected 
a number of instantaneous stereoscopic 
views of the streets and public places 
of Paris and of New York, each of 
them showing numerous walking fig- 
ures, among which some may be found 
in every stage of the complex act we 
are studying. Mr. Barley has had the 
kindness to leave his higher tasks to 
transfer several of these to our pages, 
so that the reader may be sure that he 
looks upon an exact copy of real human 
individuals in the act of walking. 
Fig. 1. 
The first subject is caught with his 
legs stretched in a stride, the remarka- 
ble length of which arrests our atten- 
tion. The sole of the right foot is 
almost vertical. By the action of the 
muscles of the calf it has rolled off 
from the ground like a portion of the 
tire of a wheel, the heel rising first, 
and thus the body, already advancing 
with all its acquired velocity, and in- 
clined forward, has been pushed along, 
and, as it were, tipped over, so as to 6 
THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
fall upon the other foot, now refidy to 
receive its weight. 
Fig. 4. 
Fig. 2. 
The foot lias now swung forward, 
and, tending to swing back again, the 
limb being straightened, and the body 
tipped forward, the heel strikes the 
ground. The angle which the sole of 
the foot forms with the ground in- 
creases with the length of the stride; 
and as this last surprised us, so the 
extent of this angle astonishes us in 
many of the figures, in this among the 
rest. 
The heel strikes the ground with 
great force, as the wear of our boots 
and shoes in that part shows us. But 
the projecting heel of the human foot 
is the arm of a lever, having the ankle- 
joint as its fulcrum, and, as it strikes 
the ground, brings the sole of the foot 
down flat upon it, as shown in figure 1. 
At the same time the weight of the 
limb and body is thrown upon the foot, 
by the joint effect of muscular action 
and acquired velocity, and the other 
foot is now ready to rise from the 
ground and repeat the process we have 
traced in its fellow. 
No artist would have dared to draw 
a walking figure in attitudes like some 
of these. The swinging limb is so 
In the second figure, the right leg is 
bending at the knee, so as to lift the 
foot from the ground, in order that it 
may swing forward. 
Fig. 3. 
The next stage of movement is shown 
in the left leg of figure 3. This leg is 
seen suspended in air, a little beyond 
the middle of the arc through which it 
swings, and before it has straightened 
itself, which it will presently do, as 
shown in the next figure. THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
7 
much shortened that the toe never by 
any accident scrapes the ground, if this 
is tolerably even. In cases of partial 
paralysis, the scraping of the toe, as 
the patient walks, is one of the charac- 
teristic marks of imperfect muscular 
action. 
Walking, then, is a perpetual falling 
with a perpetual self-recovery. It is a 
most complex, violent, and perilous op- 
eration, which we divest of its extreme 
danger only by continual practice from 
a very early period of life. We find 
how complex it is when we attempt to 
analyze it, and we see that we never 
understood it thoroughly until the time 
of the instantaneous photograph. We 
learn how violent it is, when we walk 
against a post or a door in the dark. 
We discover how dangerous it is, when 
we slip or trip and come down, perhaps 
breaking or dislocating our limbs, or 
overlook the last step of a flight of 
stairs, and discover with what headlong 
violence we have been hurling ourselves 
forward. 
Two curious facts are easily proved. 
First, a man is shorter when he is walk- 
ing than when at rest. We have found 
a very simple way of showing this by 
having a rod or yardstick placed hori- 
zontally, so as to touch the top of the 
head forcibly, as we stand under it. In 
walking rapidly beneath it, even if the 
eyes are shut, to avoid involuntary stoop- 
ing, the top of the head will not even 
graze the rod. The other fact is, that 
one side of a man always tends to out- 
walk the other, so that no person can 
walk far in a straight line, if he is blind- 
folded. 
The somewhat singular illustration at 
the head of our article carries out an 
idea which has only been partially al- 
luded to by others. Man is a wheel, 
with two spokes, his legs, and two frag- 
ments of a tire, his feet. He rolls 
successively on each of these fragments 
from the heel to the toe. If he had 
spokes enough, he would go round and 
round as the boys do when they ‘‘make 
a wheel” with their four limbs for its 
spokes. But having only two available 
for ordinary locomotion, each of these 
has to be taken up as soon as it has been 
used, and carried forward to be used 
again, and so alternately with the pair. 
The peculiarity of biped-walking is, 
that the centre of gravity is shifted from 
one leg to the other, and the one not 
employed can shorten itself so as to 
swing forward, passing by that which 
supports the body. 
This is just what no automaton can 
do. Many of our readers have, how- 
ever, seen a young lady in the shop- 
windows, or entertained her in their 
own nurseries, who professes to be this 
hitherto impossible walking automaton, 
and who calls herself by the Homeric- 
sounding epithet Autoperipatetikos. 
The golden-booted legsofthis young lady 
remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, while 
their size assures us that she is not in 
any way related to Cinderella. On be- 
ing wound up, as if she were a piece of 
machinery, and placed on a level sur- 
face, she proceeds to toddle off, taking 
very short steps like a child, holding 
herself very stiff and straight, with a 
little lifting at each step, and all this 
with a mighty inward whirring and 
buzzing of the enginery which consti- 
tutes her muscular system. 
An autopsy of one of her family who 
fell into our hands, reveals the secret 
springs of her action. Wishing to spare 
her as a member of the defenceless sex, 
it pains us to say, that, ingenious as her 
counterfeit walking is, she is an impos- 8 
THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
tor. Worse than this,—with all our 
reverence for her brazen crinoline, duty 
compels us to reveal a fact concerning 
her which will shock the feelings of 
those who have watched the stately ri- 
gidity of decorum with which she moves 
in the presence of admiring multitudes. 
She is a quadruped! Inside of her 
great golden boots, which represent one 
pair of feet, is another smaller pair, 
which move freely through these hol- 
low casings. 
Four cams or eccentric wheels impart 
motion to her four supports, by which 
she is carried forward, always resting on 
two of them,—the boot of one side, and 
the foot of the other. Her movement, 
then, is not walking j it is not skating, 
which it seems to resemble ; it is more 
like that of a person walking with two 
crutches besides his two legs. The 
machinery is simple enough : a strong 
spiral spring, three or four cog-wheels 
and pinions, a fly to regulate the motion 
as in a musical box, and the cams be- 
fore mentioned. As a toy, it or she is 
very taking to grown people as well as 
children. It is a literal fact, that the 
police requested one of our dealers to 
remove Miss Autoperipatetikos from his 
window, because the crowd she drew 
obstructed the sidewalk. 
We see by our analysis of the pro- 
cess, and by the difficulty of imitating 
it, that walking is a much more deli- 
cate, perilous, complicated operation 
than we should suppose, and well worth 
studying in a practical point of view, 
to see what can be done to make it 
easier and safer. * * * * * 
It is not two years since the sight of 
a person who had lost one of his lower 
limbs was an infrequent occurrence. 
Now, alas! there are few of us who have 
not a cripple among our friends, if not 
in our own families. A mechanical art 
which provided for an occasional and 
exceptional want has become a great 
and active branch of industry. War 
unmakes legs, and human skill must 
supply their places as it best may. 
Our common idea of a wooden leg is 
realized in the “peg” of the Greenwich 
pensioner. This humble contrivance 
has done excellent service in its time, 
and may serve a good purpose still in 
some cases. A plain working-man, who 
has outlived his courting-days and need 
not sacrifice much to personal appear- 
ance, may find an honest, old-fashioned 
wooden leg, cheap, lasting, requiring 
no repairs, the best thing for his pur- 
pose. In higher social positions, and 
at an age when appearances are reali- 
ties, in the condition of the Marquis of 
Anglesea, for instance, it becomes im- 
portant to provide the cripple with a 
limb which shall be presentable in po- 
lite society, where misfortunes of a 
certain obtrusiveness may be pitied, 
but are never tolerated under the chan- 
deliers. 
The leg invented by Mr. Potts, and 
bearing the name of the “Anglesea leg,” 
was long famous, and doubtless merited 
the reputation it acquired as superior to 
its predecessors. But legs cannot re- 
main stationary while the march of im- 
provement goes on around them, and 
they, too, have moved onward with the 
stride of progress. 
A boy of ten years old, living in a 
New Hampshire village, had one of his 
legs crushed so as to require amputa- 
tion. The little fellow was furnished 
with a “peg,” and stumped round upon 
it for ten years. We can imagine what 
he suffered as he grew into adolescence 
under the cross of this unsightly appen- THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES 
9 
dage. He was of comely aspect, tall, 
well-shaped, with well-marked, regular 
features. But just at the period when 
personal graces are most valued, when 
a good presence is a blank check on the 
Bank of Fortune, with Nature’s signa- 
ture at the bottom, he found himself 
made hideous by this fearful-looking 
counterfeit of a limb. It announced 
him at the threshold he reached with 
beating heart by a thump more energetic 
than the palpitation in his breast. It 
identified him as far as the eye of jeal- 
ousy could see his moving figure. The 
“peg” became intolerable, and he un- 
strapped it and threw himself on the 
tender mercies of the crutch. 
But the crutch is at best an instru- 
ment of torture. It presses upon a 
great bundle of nerves; it distorts the 
figure; it stamps a character of its own 
upon the whole organism; it is even 
accused of distempering the mind it- 
self. 
This young man, whose name was 
“ B. Frank. Palmer,” (the abbrevia- 
tions probably implying the name of a 
distinguished Boston philosopher of the 
last century, whose visit to Philadelphia 
is still remembered in that city,) set 
himself at work to contrive a limb 
which should take the place of the one 
he had lost, fulfilling its functions and 
counterfeiting its aspect so far as possi- 
ble. The result was the “Palmer leg,” 
one of the most unquestionable triumphs 
of American ingenuity. Its victorious 
march has been unimpeded by any se- 
rious obstacle since it first stepped into 
public notice. The inventor was intro- 
duced by the late Dr. John C. Warren, 
in 1846, to the Massachusetts General 
Hospital, which institution he has for 
many years supplied with his artificial 
limbs. He received medals from the 
American Institute, the Massachusetts 
Charitable Association, and the Great 
Exhibition in New York, and obtained 
the great Medal and an honorary men- 
tion from the Royal Commissioners of 
the World’s Exhibition in London,— 
being the only maker of legs so distin- 
guished. These are only a few of fifty 
honorary awards he has received at va- 
rious times. The famous surgeons of 
London, the Societe cle Chirurgie of 
Paris, and the most celebrated practi- 
tioners of the United States have given 
him their hearty recommendations. So 
lately as last August, that shrewd and 
skilful surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, 
who is as cautious in handling his epi- 
thets as he is bold in using the imple- 
ments of his art, strongly advised Sur- 
geon-General Hammond to adopt the 
Palmer leg, which, after a dozen years’ 
experience, he had found none to equal. 
We see it announced that the Board of 
Surgeons appointed by the Surgeon- 
General to select the best arm and leg 
to be procured by the Government for its 
crippled soldiers chose that of Mr. Pal- 
mer, and that Dr. Hammond approved 
their selection. 
We have thought it proper to show 
that Mr. Palmer’s invention did not 
stand in need of our commendation. 
Its merits, as we have seen, are con- 
ceded by the tribunals best fitted to 
judge, and we are therefore justified in 
selecting it as an illustration of Ameri- 
can mechanical skill. 
We give three views of the Palmer 
leg: an inside view when extended, a 
second when flexed, a third as it appears 
externally. 10 
THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
Arts of the Franklin Institute of Penn- 
sylvania thus stated the peculiarities of 
Mr. Palmer’s invention : 
“First. An ingenious arrangement 
*of springs and cords in the inside of 
the limb, by which, when the wearer is 
in the erect position, the limb is ex- 
tended, and the foot flexed so as to pre- 
sent a natural appearance. 
u Second. By a second arrangement 
of cords and springs in the inside of the 
limb, the foot and toes are graduallyand 
easily extended, when the heel is placed 
in contact with the ground. In conse- 
quence of this arrangement, the limp- 
ing gait, and the unpleasant noise made 
by the sudden stroke of the ball of the 
foot upon the ground in walking, which 
are so obvious in the Ordinary leg, are 
avoided. 
“ Third. By a peculiar arrangement 
of the knee-joint, it is rendered little 
liable to wear, and all lateral or rotary 
motion is avoided. It is hardly neces- 
sary to remark that any such motion is 
undesirable in an artificial leg, as it 
renders its support unstable.” 
Before reporting some of the facts 
which we have seen, or learned by per- 
sonal inquiry, we must be allowed, for 
the sake of convenience, to exercise the 
privilege granted to all philosophical 
students, of enlarging the nomenclature 
applicable to the subject of which we 
are treating. 
Man, according to the Sphinx, is suc- 
cessively a quadruped, a biped, and a 
triped. But circumstances may change 
his natural conditions. If lie loses a 
leg, he becomes a uniped. If he loses 
both his legs, he becomes a nulliped. 
If art replaces the loss of one limb with 
a factitious substitute, he becomes a 
ligniped, or, if we wish to be very pre- 
The Committee on Science and the cise, a uniligniped; two wooden legs THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
11 
entitle him to be called a biligniped. 
Our terminology being accepted, we are 
ready to proceed. 
To make ourselves more familiar with 
the working of the invention we are 
considering, we have visited Mr. Pal- 
mer’s establishments in Philadelphia 
and Boston. The distinguished “Sur- 
geon-Artist” is a man of fine person, as 
we have said. But if he has any per- 
sonal vanity, it does not betray itself 
with regard to that portion of his or- 
ganism which Nature furnished him. 
At least, if he follows the common rule 
and puts that which he considers his 
best foot foremost, he evidently awards 
the preference to that which was born 
of his brain. He walks as well as 
many do who have limbs, 
though not so well as some of his own 
patients. He puts his vegetable leg 
through many of the movements which 
would seem to demand the contractile 
animal fibre. He goes up and down 
stairs with very tolerable ease and des- 
patch. Only when he comes to stand 
upon the human limb, we begin to find 
that it is not in all respects equal to the 
divine one. In his anteroom were 
unipeds in different stages of their 
second learning to walk as lignipeds. 
At first they move with a good deal of 
awkwardness, but gradually the patent 
limb seems to become, as it were, pene- 
trated by the nerves, and the intelli- 
gence to run downwards until it reaches 
the last joint of the member. 
Mr. Palmer, as we have incidentally 
mentioned, has a branch establishment 
in Boston, to which also we have paid 
a visit, in order to learn some of the 
details of the manufacture, to which 
we had not attended, in our pleasant 
interview with the inventor. The ante- 
chamber here, too, was the nursery of 
immature lignipeds, ready to exhibit 
their growing accomplishments to the 
inquiring stranger. It almost seems as 
if the artificial leg were the scholar, 
rather than the person who wears it. 
The polite Boston partner, who, if 
he were in want of a customer, would 
almost persuade a man with two good 
legs to provide himself with a third, 
carried us to the back part of the 
building, where legs are organized. 
The willow, which furnishes the 
charcoal for the gunpowder that blows 
off limbs, is the wood chosen to supply 
the loss it has helped to occasion. It is 
light, strong, does not warp or “check” 
so much as many other woods, and is, 
as the workmen say, healthy, that is, 
not irritating to the parts with which 
it is in contact. Whether the salicine 
it may contain enters the pores, and 
invigorates the system, may be a ques- 
tion for those who remember the drugs 
in the Sultan’s bat-handle and the 
remarkable cure they wrought. This 
wood is kept in a dry-house with as 
much care as that intended for the 
manufacture of pianos. It is thoroughly 
steamed also, before using. 
The wood comes in rudely shaped 
blocks, as lasts are sent to the factory, 
seeming to have been coarsely hewed 
out of the log. The shaping, as we 
found, to our surprise, is all done by 
hand. We had expected to see great 
lathes, worked by steam-power, taking 
in a rough stick, and turning out a 
finished limb. But it is shaped very 
much as a sculptor finishes his marble, 
with an eye to artistic effect,—not so 
much in the view of the stranger, who 
does not look upon its naked loveliness, 
as in that of the wearer, who is seduced 
by its harmonious outlines into its pur- 
chase, and solaced with the conscious- 12 
THE nUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
ness that he carries so much beauty 
and symmetry about with him. The 
hollowing-out of the interior is done 
by wicked-looking blades and scoops at 
the end of long stems, suggesting the 
thought of dentists’ instruments as 
they might have been in the days of 
the giants. The joints are most care- 
fully made, more particularly at the 
knee, where a strong bolt of steel passes 
through the solid wood. Windows, ob- 
long openings, are left in the sides of 
the limb, to insure a good supply of air 
to the extremity of the mutilated limb. 
Many persons are not aware that all 
parts of the surface breathe just as the 
lungs breathe, exhaling carbonic acid 
as well as water, and taking in more or 
less oxygen. 
One of the workmen, a pleasant- 
looking young fellow, was himself, we 
were told, a ligniped. AVe begged him 
to give us a specimen of his walking. 
He arose, and walked rather slowly 
across the room and back. “Once 
more,” we said, not feeling quite sure 
which was Nature’s leg and which Mr. 
Palmer’s. So he walked up and down 
the room again, until we had satisfied 
ourselves which was the leg of willow, 
and which that of flesh and bone. It 
is not, perhaps, to the credit of our eyes 
or observing powers, but it is a fact, 
that we deliberately selected the wrong 
leg. No victim of the thimble-rigger’s 
"trickery was ever more completely taken 
in than we were by the contrivance of 
the ingenious Surgeon-Artist. 
Our freely expressed admiration led 
to the telling of wonderful stories about 
the doings of persons with artificial 
legs. One individual was mentioned 
who skated particularly well; another 
who danced with zeal and persever- 
ance; and a third who must needs 
swim in his leg, which brought on a 
dropsical affection of the limb,—to 
which kind of complaint the willow 
has, of course, a constitutional tenden- 
cy,—and for which it had to come to 
the infirmary where the diseases that 
wood is heir to are treated. 
CUTS OF “ BILIGNIPEDS.” THE nUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES 
13 
But the most wonderful monuments 
of the great restorer’s skill are the 
patients who have lost both legs,—nul- 
lipeds, as presented to Mr. Palmer, 
bilignipeds, as they walk forth again 
before the admiring world, balanced 
upon their two new-born members. We 
have before us delineations of six of 
these hybrids between the animal and 
vegetable world. One of them was 
employed at a railway station near this 
(Atlantic) city, where he was often 
seen by a member of our own house- 
hold, whose testimony we are in the 
habit of considering superior in vera- 
city to the naked truth as commonly 
delivered. He walked about, we are 
assured, a little slowly and stiffly, but 
in a way that hardly attracted atten- 
tion. 
The inventor of the leg has not been 
contented to stop there. He has worked 
for years upon the construction of an 
artificial arm, and has at length suc- 
ceeded in arranging a mechanism,which, 
if it cannot serve a pianist or violinist, 
is yet equal to holding the reins when 
driving, receiving fees for professional 
services, and similar easy labors. 
It is one of the signs of our advanc- 
ing American civilization, that the arts 
which preserve and restore the personal 
advantages necessary or favorable to cul- 
tivated social life -should have reached 
such perfection among us. American 
dentists have achieved a reputation 
which has sent them into the palaces 
of Europe, to open the mouths of sove- 
reigns and princes, as freely as the 
jockeys look into those of horses and 
colts. Bad teeth, too common among 
us, help to breed good dentists, no 
doubt; but besides this there is an 
absolute demand for a certain comeli- 
ness of person throughout all the decent 
classes of our society. It is the same 
standard of propriety in appearances 
which lays us open to the reproach of 
caring too much for dress. 
If the national ear for music is not 
so acute as that of some other peoples, 
the national eye for the harmonies of 
form and color is better than we often 
find in older communities. We have 
a right to claim that our sculptors and 
painters prove so much as this for us. 
American taste was offended, outraged, 
by the odious “peg” which the Old- 
World soldier or beggar was proud to 
show. We owe the well-shaped, intel- 
ligent, docile limb, the half-reasoning 
willow of Mr. Palmer, to the same 
sense of beauty and fitness which 
moulded the soft outlines of the Indian 
Girl and the White Captive in the 
studio of his namesake at Albany. 
As we wean ourselves from the Old 
World, and become more and more 
nationalized in our great struggle for 
existence as a free people, we shall 
carry this aptness for the production of 
beautiful forms more and more into 
common life, which demands first what 
is necessary and then what is pleas- 
Where Mr. Palmer means to stop 
in supplying bodily losses, it would be 
premature to say. We suppose the 
accidents happening*occasionally from 
the use of the guillotine are beyond his 
skill, and spare our readers the lively 
remark suggested by the contrary hypo- 
thesis. 14 
THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES, 
ing. It is but a step from the painter’s 
canvas to the weaver’s loom, and the 
pictures which are leaving the easel 
to-day will show themselves in the 
patterns that sweep the untidy side- 
walks to-morrow. 
The same plastic power which is 
showing itself in the triumphs of Ame- 
rican sculpture will reach the forms of 
our household-utensils. The beans of 
Beverly shall yet be baked in vases 
that Etruria might have envied, and 
the clay pipe of the Americanized Mi- 
lesian shall be a thing of beauty as well 
as a joy forever. 
We are already pushing the plastic 
arts farther than many persons have 
suspected. There is a small town not 
far from us where a million dollars’ 
worth of gold is annually beaten into 
ornaments for the breasts, the fingers, 
the ears, the necks of women. Many 
a lady supposes she is buying Parisian 
adornments, when Attleborough could 
say to her, proudly, like Cornelia, 
“ These are my jewels.” The work- 
men of this little town not only meet 
the tastes of the less fastidious classes, 
to whom all that glisters is gold, but 
they shape the purest metal into artis- 
tic and effective patterns. 
When the Koh-i-noor—the Moun- 
tain of Light—was to be fashioned, it 
was found to be almost as formidable a 
task as that of Xerxes, when he under- 
took to hew Mount Athos to the shape 
of man. The great crystal was sent to 
Holland, as the only place where it 
could be properly cut. We have lately 
seen a brilliant which, if not a moun- 
tain of light, was yet a very respecta- 
ble mound of radiance, valued at some 
ten or twelve thousand dollars, cut in 
this virgin settlement, and exposed in 
one of our shop-windows to tempt our 
frugal villagers. 
Monsieur Trousseau, Professor in the 
Medical School of Paris, delivered a 
discursive lecture not long ago, in which 
he soared from the region of drugs, his 
well-known special province, into the 
thin atmosphere of aesthetics. It is the 
influence that surrounds his fortunate 
fellow-citizens, he declares, which alone 
preserves their intellectual supremacy. 
If a Parisian milliner, he says, remove 
to New York, she will so degenerate in 
the course of a couple of years that the 
squaw of a Choctaw chief would be 
ashamed to wear one of her bonnets. 
Listen, 0 Parisian cockney, pecking 
among the brood most plethoric with 
conceit, of all the coop-fed citizens who. 
tread the pavements of earth’s many- 
chimneyed towns ! America has made 
implements of husbandry which out- 
mow and out-reap the world. She has 
contrived man-slaying engines which 
kill people faster than any others. She 
has modelled the wave-slicing clipper 
which outsails all }Tour argosies and ar- 
madas. She has revolutionized naval 
warfare once by the steamboat. She 
has revolutionized it a second time by 
planting towers of iron on the elephan- 
tine backs of the waves. She has in- 
• 
vented the sewing-machine to save the 
dainty fingers of your virtuous grisettes 
from uncongenial toil, so that Fifine and 
Fretillon may have more leisure for self- 
development. She has taught you a 
whole new system of labor in her ma- 
chinery for making watches and rifles. 
She has bestoived upon you and all the 
world an anodynenchich enables you to 
cut arms and legs off without hurting 
the patient; and ichen his leg is off, she 
has given you a true artist’s limb for THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 
15 
your cripple to walk upon, instead of 
the peg on which he has stumped from 
the days of Guy de Chauliac to those 
of M. Nelaton. She has been con- 
triving well-shaped boots and shoes for 
the very people who, if they were your 
countrymen, would be clumping about 
in wooden sabots. In works of scien- 
tific industry, hardly to be looked for 
among so new a people, she has dis- 
tanced your best artificers. The micro- 
scopes made at Canastota, in the back- 
woods of New York, look in vain for 
their rivals in Paris, and must challenge 
the best workmanship of London before 
they can be approached in excellence. 
The great eye that stares into the celes- 
tial spaces from its workshop in Cam- 
bridge dives deeper through their 
clouds of silvery dust than any instru- 
ment mounted in your observatory in 
face of the Luxembourg. Our artisans 
produce no Gobelin tapestries or Sbvres 
porcelain as yet; but when your mobs 
have looted the Tuileries, our shop- 
keepers have bought up enough speci- 
mens to serve them as patterns by-and- 
by- 
All this is something for a nation 
which has hardly pulled up the stumps 
out of its city market-places. It is sad 
to reflect that milliners, like Burgundy, 
are spoiled by transportation to the 
headquarters of American fashion. But 
as the best bonnet of the Empress’s 
own artist would be exploded with yells 
a couple of seasons after the time when 
it was the rage, the Icarian professor’s 
flight into the regions of rhetoric has 
not led him to any very logical resting- 
place from which he can look down on 
the aesthetic possibilities of New York 
or other Western cities emerging from 
the semi-barbarous state. 
We are not proud, of course, of any 
of the mechanical triumphs we have 
won; they are well enough, and show 
—to borrow the words of a distinguished 
American, whom, during his too brief 
career, we held unrivalled by any ex- 
perimenter in the Old World for the 
depth as well as the daring of his in- 
vestigations—that some things can be 
done as well as others. 
Our specialty is of somewhat larger 
scope. We profess to make men and 
women out of human beings better than 
any of the joint-stock companies called 
dynasties have done or can do it. We 
profess to make citizens out of men,— 
not citoyens, but persons educated to 
question all privileges asserted by others, 
and claim all rights belonging to them- 
selves,—the only way in which the in- 
finitely most important party to the 
compact between the governed and 
governing can avoid being cheated out 
of the best rights inherent in human 
nature, as an experience the world has 
seen almost enough of has proved. We 
are in trouble just now, on account of a 
neglected hereditary melanosis, as Mon- 
sieur Trousseau might call it. When 
we recover from the social and political 
convulsion it has produced, and elimi- 
nate the materies morbi,—and both 
these events are only matters of time,— 
perhaps we shall have leisure to breed 
our own milliners. If not, there will 
probably be refugees enough from the 
Old World, who have learned the fash- 
ions in courts, and will be glad to turn 
their knowledge to a profitable use for 
the benefit of their republican patron- 
esses in New York and Boston. 
We have run away from our subject 
farther than we intended at starting; 
but an essay on legs could hardly avoid 
the rambling tendency which naturally 
belongs to these organs. (the Atlantic plmitMn* 
(S Ou 
PROSPECTUS OF THE TWELFTH VOLUME. 
The July Number commences the Twelfth Volume of the “Atlantic Monthly,” and con- 
tains such a list of contents as will entitle it to marked consideration. Nathaniel Hawthorne 
contributes for it “Outside Glimpses of English Poverty,” one of the most interesting of his 
admirable English Sketches. Oliver Wendell Holmes has written for it “Doings of the Sun- 
beam.” Robert Dale Owen discusses “The Claims to Service or Labor,” and presents some 
new views for the study of the people of America. Gail Hamilton continues her popular “ Gala- 
Days.” Professor Agassiz offers another eloquent paper, “ On the Growth of Continents.” And 
many other articles of equal value with the above are included in the present number. 
Begun in 1857, the “Atlantic Monthly” has now reached its sixty-ninth number. Its cir- 
culation increasing largely from the start has given it such a currency throughout the country 
as no other American magazine has ever acquired. Its faith in impartial Liberty as a princi- 
ple, and its warfare against Despotism in every form, have made it a welcome visitor, far and 
wide, every month. It does not abate, in these our days of trial and battle, one jot of that 
firm belief in the brighter days to come which Right and Justice are sure always to win, but 
its future pages will show an increased activity in placing before the minds of the people an 
unfaltering confidence in the power of the North to limit the existence of a rebellion founded 
in cruel injustice and oppression. 
The prosperity of the “Atlantic” enables its conductors to employ the most eminent talent 
of the country in its columns. All the best known writers in American literature, contributing 
constantly to its pages, give it the sole right to be known as our national magazine. Its staff 
still comprises the following names among its leading contributors. 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, 
LOUIS AGASSIZ, 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
C. C. I1AZEWELL, 
T. W. IIIGGINSON, 
AUTHOR “ Margret Howth,” 
MRS. JULIA W. HOWE, 
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY, 
OLIVER W. HOLMES, 
JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
E. P. WHIPPLE, 
BAYARD TAYLOR, 
CHARLES E. NORTON, 
GEORGE S. HILLARD, 
HENRY GILES, 
WALTER MITCHELL, 
HENRY T. TUCKERMAN, 
JOHN WEISS, 
MRS. II. B. STOWE, 
HARRIET MARTINEAU, 
CHARLES READE, 
“THE COUNTRY PARSON,” 
ROSE TERRY, 
HARRIET E. PRESCOTT, 
ROBERT T. S. LOWELL, 
J. T. TROWBRIDGE, 
JOSIAII P. QUINCY, 
PROF. A. D. WHITE. 
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