232 THE UPPER LIMB IN MAN. 



LECTUEE IV. 



THE UPPER LIMB IN MAN. 



1. The evidence adduced in my last lecture is, in my 

 opinion, amply sufficient to prove that the erect attitude, in 

 contradistinction to what I must now term the semi-erect 

 attitude in certain animals, has been conferred on man alone. 



2. The erect attitude in man is the principal condition of 

 that high privilege which he enjoys of the free use of his 

 upper limbs, in the performance of higher functions than the 

 locomotory. 



3. The upper limbs in man are the immediate instruments, 

 under the guidance of his rational consciousness, of that 

 power with which he is invested over material nature. Set 

 free by the peculiar construction of his lower limbs and 

 spinal column, and presenting a peculiar organisation of their 

 own. his upper limbs act freely in all those relations of space 

 involved in the human conception of matter. 



4. The upper limbs, like the lower, consist of a proximal 

 element — the shoulder, an intermediate element or shaft, 

 consisting of the upper arm and fore-arm — and a distal ele- 

 ment — the hand. 



5. — The Shoulder. 



a. The fundamental peculiarity of the human shoulder 

 consists in the direction of its axis, which is a line extending 

 from the body of the fourth dorsal vertebra to the upper area 

 of the glenoid cavity ; and traversing, therefore, the body of 

 the coracoid portion of the scapula. The shaft of the scapula 



