It is to this resistance that must be attributed the following phenomena: 1st. We experience the greatest difficulties in making luxations in the dead body, principally in the articulations called enarthrodial. 2d. In the living subject the external efforts are rarely sufficient to produce them; it is necessary that the powerful action of the muscles should be added. 3d. The punishment formerly employed, of drawing the limbs of criminals by attaching horses to them, was much more terrible, because the resistance of the ligaments made it continue longer; almost always the horses were unable to produce the separation of the extremities; it was necessary that a cutting instrument should assist their efforts. 4th. Weights suspended to a tendon do not break it unless they are enormous; thus the best strings to be employed in the arts would be these textures of the fibrous organs, if drying did not take from these organs their softness and flexibility, if moisture did not alter them, &c. 5th. We cannot without great efforts tear an aponeurosis, especially those of any thickness, as the fascia lata, the albuginea, the dura-mater, &c. Yet this resistance is sometimes overcome in the living body, and we sometimes see the rupture of the tendons of the solæus, of the small plantaris, of the extensors of the thigh, &c. How does it happen, that the softer texture of the muscle never yields, whilst that of the tendon much more compact is broken? It is because in these cases the fleshy fibres are always in contraction; consequently far from being stretched, as the tendinous fibres are which are then found, if we may so say, passive, their different portions make an effort to approximate each other; and they do in fact approximate; this gives to the muscle a density and hardness equal, and in some cases even much greater, than those of their tendon, as we can ascertain by applying the hand upon a muscle in contraction. A proof that this kind of ruptures is owing to the cause I have mentioned, is this, that if in a dead body we suspend a weight to a muscle detached from the bone at one of its extremities, it will be the fleshy and not the tendinous portion that will break.