162 PHYSICAL EXPRESSION. 



attention was especially drawn to the various pos- 

 tures presented by children brought to me for exami- 

 nation at the East London Hospital for Children, 

 and from 1878 I kept notes of the spontaneous pos-. 

 tures observed.* The children were requested to 

 hold out their hands, and the passive condition or 

 posture of each hand was noted. At first it was 

 difficult to describe the postures in anatomical lan- 

 guage, though some were seen to be characteristic 

 of certain nerve conditions. In 1879, while visit- 

 ing Florence, it struck me that the posture of the 

 hands of the Venus de' Medici ( was exactly similar 

 to the posture so often seen in nervous children. 

 Later in the year, at the British Museum, I saw 

 the English Yenus side by side with the Diana 

 feminine coyness and nervousness represented side 

 by side with the expression of energy and strength 

 and the contrast of the hand postures showed 

 them to be in direct antithesis. While looking at 

 the marble hands it became easy to describe their 

 anatomical postures. 



In the " nervous hand " the wrist is slightly 

 flexed or bent, the metacarpo-phalangeal joints are 

 moderately hyper-extended (extended beyond the 

 straight line), the first and second internodes being 

 either slightly flexed or kept straight. The thumb 

 is extended backwards, and somewhat abducted 

 from the fingers. This spontaneous posture I have 



* " Spontaneous Postures of the Hand considered as indications 

 of the Conditions of the Brain." Read before the Royal Medical and 

 Chirurgical Society of London, November 28, 1882. See " Brain," 

 part xxiii. 



f See Fig. 32, p. 296. 



