426 



STRENGTH, FEATS OF. 



hammer an operation winch was performed with 

 much less danger than when his hack touched the 

 ground. 5. His next feat was to lie down on the 

 ground. A man being then placed on his knees, 

 he drew his heels towards his body, and, raising 

 his knees, he lifted up the man gradually, till, 

 having brought his knees perpendicularly under 

 him, he raised his own body up, and, placing his 

 arms around the man's legs, rose with him, and set 

 him down on some low table or eminence of the 

 came height as his knees. This feat he sometimes 

 performed with two men in place of one. 6. In his 

 last, and apparently most wonderful performance, 

 he was elevated on a frame work, and supported a 

 heavy cannon placed upon a scale at some distance 

 below him, which was fixed to a rope attached to 

 his girdle. Previous to the fixing of the scale to 

 the rope attached to his girdle, the cannon and 

 scale rested upon rollers; but when all was ready, 

 the rollers were knocked away, and the cannon 

 remained supported by the strength of his loins. 

 These feats may be briefly explained thus: The 

 feats No. 1, 2, and 6, depend entirely on the natural 

 strength of the bones of the pelvis, which form a 

 double arch, which it would require an immense 

 force to break, by any external pressure directed to 

 the centre of the arch ; and as the legs and thighs 

 are capable of sustaining four or five thousand 

 pounds when they stand quite upright, the performer 

 has no difficulty in resisting the force of two horses, 

 or in sustaining the weight of a cannon weighing 

 two or three thousand pounds. The feat of the 

 anvil is certainly a very surprising one. The diffi- 

 culty, however, really consists in . sustaining the 

 anvil; for when this is done, the effect of the ham- 

 mering is nothing. If the anvil were a thin piece 

 of iron, or even two or three times heavier than 

 the hammer, the performer would be killed by a 

 few blows; but the blows are scarcely felt when 

 the anvil is very heavy, for the more matter the 

 anvil has, the^greater is its enertia, and it is the less 

 liable to be struck out of its place ; for when it has 

 received by the blow the whole momentum of the 

 hammer, its velocity will be so much less than that 

 of the hammer as its quantity of matter is greater. 

 When the blow, indeed, is struck, the man feels 

 less of the weight of the anvil than he did before, 

 because, in the reaction of the stone, all the parts 

 of it round about the hammer rise towards the 

 blow. This property is illustrated by the well- 

 known experiment of laying a stick with its ends 

 upon two drinking glasses full of water, and striking 

 the stick downwards in the middle with an iron 

 bar. The stick will in this case he broken without 

 breaking the glasses or spilling the water. But if 

 the stick is struck upwards, as if to throw it up in 

 the air, the glasses will break if the blow be strong, 

 and if the blow is not very quick, the water will 

 be spilt without breaking the glasses. When the 

 performer supports a man upon his belly, he does 

 it by means of the strong arch formed by his back- 

 bone and the bones of his legs and thighs. If there 

 were room for them, he could bear three or four, 

 or, in their stead, a great stone, to be broken with 

 one blow. A number of feats of real and extraor- 

 dinary strength were exhibited about a century ago, 

 in London, by Thomas Topham, who was five feet 

 ton inches high, and about thirty-one years of age. 

 He was entirely ignorant of any of the methods for 

 making his strength appear more surprising; and he 

 often performed by his own natural powers what 

 he learned had been done by others bv artificial 



means. A distressing example of this occurred in 

 his attempt to imitate the feat of the German 

 Samson by pulling against horses. Ignorant of 

 the method which we have already described, he 

 seated himself on the ground, with his feet against 

 two stirrups, and by the weight of his body he suc- 

 ceeded in pulling against a single horse; but in 

 attempting to pull against two horses, he was lifted 

 out of his place, and one of his knees was shattered 

 against the stirrups, so as to deprive him of most 

 of the strength of one of his legs. The following 

 are the feats of real strength which doctor Desagu- 

 liers saw him perform: 1. Having rubbed his 

 fingers with coal ashes to keep them from slipping, 

 he rolled up a very strong and large pewter plate. 



2. Having laid seven or eight short ai.d strong 

 pieces of tobacco-pipe on the first and third finger, 

 he broke them by the force of his middle finger. 



3. He broke the bowl of a strong tobacco-pipe, 

 placed between his first and third finger, by pressing 

 his fingers together sideways. 4. Having thrust 

 such another bowl under his garter, his legs being 

 bent, he broke it to pieces by the tendons of his 

 hams, without altering the bending of his leg. 5. 

 He lifted with his teeth, and held in a horizontal 

 position for a considerable time, a table six feet 

 long, with half a hundred weight hanging at the 

 end of it. The feet of the table rested against 

 his knees. 6. Holding in his right hand .an iron 

 kitchen poker three feet long and three inches 

 round, he struck upon his bare left arm, between 

 the elbow and the wrist, till he bent the poker 

 nearly to a right angle. 7. Taking a similar poker, 

 and holding the ends of it in his hands, and the 

 middle against the back of his neck, he brought 

 both ends of it together before him ; and he then 

 pulled it almost straight again. This last feat was 

 the most difficult, because the muscles which sepa- 

 rate the arms horizontally from each other, are not 

 so strong as those which bring them together. 8. 

 He broke a rope about two inches in circumference, 

 which was partly wound about a cylinder four 

 inches in diameter, having fastened the other end 

 of it to straps that went over his shoulder. 9. 

 Doctor Desaguliers saw him lift a rolling stone of 

 about 800 pounds weight with his hands only, 

 standing in a frame above it, and taking hold of a 

 frame fastened to it. Hence doctor Besaguliers 

 gives the following relative view of the strengths 

 of individuals. 



Strength of the weakest men, . 

 Strength of very strong men, 

 Strength of Topham, 

 The weight of Topham was about 



125 Ibs. 

 400 

 800 

 200 



One of the most remarkable and inexplicable 

 experiments relative to the strength of the human 

 frame, is that in which a heavy man is raised with 

 the greatest facility, when he is lifted up the 

 instant that his own lungs and those of the persons 

 who raise him are inflated with air. The heaviest 

 person in the party lies down upon two chairs, his 

 legs being supported by the one and his back by the" 

 other. Four persons, one at each leg, mid one at 

 each shoulder, then try to raise him; and they find 

 his dead weight to be very great, from the difficulty 

 they experience in supporting him. When he is 

 replaced in the chair, each of the four persons takes 

 hold of the body as before, and the person to be 

 lifted gives two signals by clapping his hands. At 

 the first signal, he himself and the four lifters begin 

 to draw a long and full breath ; and when the 

 inhalation is completed, or the iungs filled, the 



