Identifier: carpentersprinci00carp (find matches)
Title: Carpenter's principles of human physiology
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885 Meneses, Henry Power
Subjects: Human physiology Physiology
Publisher: London : J. & A. Churchill
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

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those characters which specially adapt it to the support of the body in the erect posture, and to biped progression; in which adaptation it loses much of that prehensile power which the posterior extremities of the higher Quadru-mana posses? almost equally with their anterior. The Human foot is, in proportion to the size of the whole body, larger, broader, and stronger, than that of any other Mammal save the Kangaroo. The surface of the Astragalus,which articulates with the tibia, looks almost vertically upwards, and hardly at all inwards when the sole is flat upon the ground, and the lateral facets are more nearly at right angles to this surface than in any Ape. The plane of the foot is directed at right angles to that of the leg; and its sole is concave,so that the weight of the body falls on the summit of an arch, of which the oscalcis and the metatarsal bones form the two points of support. This arched form of the foot, and the contact of the whole plantar surface with the ground, Fig. 2.
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Foot of Man, compared with posterior extremity of Orang. are peculiarly noticeable in Man; most of the Apes having the os calcis small,straight, and more or less raised from the ground, which they touch, when standing erect, with the outer side only of the foot (Fig. 2). The function of the hallux, or great-toe, moreover, is strikingly contrasted in Man and the DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 19 Apes; for whilst in the latter it is nearly as opposable as the thumb, and can be used to almost the same degree as an instrument of prehension, it chiefly serves in the former to extend the basis of support, and to advance the body in progression. But neither in its osteology nor in its myology is there any essential difference between the foot of Man and the posterior extremity of the higher Apes; for every bone and every muscle in the one has its counterpart in the other; and there is nothing which really assimilates the posterior to the anterior extremity of the Ape, or entitles the former to b

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