English prose literature; Exposition (Rhetoric); Readers -- Science
We have already seen why our muscles are so easily exhausted when we
stand stock-still; they then get no rest at all. Now, it sometimes
happens in people who have to stand for long periods at a stretch that
these muscular engines which maintain the arch are overtaxed; the arch
of the foot gives way. The foot becomes flat and flexible, and can no
longer serve as a lever. Many men and women thus become permanently
crippled; they cannot step off their toes, but must shuffle along on the
inner sides of their feet. But if the case of the overworked muscles
which maintain the arch is hard in grown-up people, it is even harder in
boys and girls who have to stand quite still for a long time, or who
have to carry such burdens as are beyond their strength. When we are
young, the bony levers and muscular engines of our feet have not only
their daily work to do, but they have continually to effect those
wonderful alterations which we call growth. Hence, the muscular engines
of young people need special care; they must be given plenty of work to
do, but that kind of active action which gives them alternate strokes of
work and rest. Even the engine of a motor cycle has three strokes of
play for one of work. Our engines, too, must have a liberal supply of
the right kind of fuel. But even with all those precautions, we have to
confess that the muscular engines of the foot do sometimes break down,
and the leverage of the foot becomes threatened. Nor have we succeeded
in finding out why they are so liable to break down in some boys and
girls and not in others. Some day we shall discover this too.
We are now to look at another part of the human machine so that we may
study a lever of the third order. The lever formed by the forearm and
hand will suit our purpose very well. It is pivoted or jointed at the
elbow; the elbow is its fulcrum (Fig. 9 B). At the opposite end of the
lever, in the, upturned palm of the hand, we shall place a weight of 1
lb. to represent the load to be moved. The power which we are to yoke to
the lever is a strong muscular engine we have not mentioned before,
called the _brachialis anticus_, or front brachial muscle. It lies in
the upper arm, where it is fixed to the bone of that part--the humerus.
It is attached to one of the bones of the forearm--the ulna--just beyond
the elbow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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