74 



LECTURE II. 



the lower followed it, and that a motion of 

 the leg was thus produced. The muscles 

 were however unable to move the retracted 

 part of the patella, because they had already 

 withdrawn it to the utmost extent of their 

 original power. Mr. Hunter saw no reason 

 why muscles, thus circumstanced, might not 

 acquire a new sphere of contraction, yet he 

 saw no mode by which they were likely to 

 do so, except through the influence of the 

 will of the patient ; and to persuade per- 

 sons to will what must appear to them an 

 impossibility, was the chief difficulty he had 

 to encounter in his endeavour to ascertain 

 the proposed subject of enquiry. He per- 

 suaded his patient to sit on a table, and 

 suffer her legs to swing backwards and for- 

 wards. This they did in the same manner 

 ^nd from the same causes that a pendulum 

 does. She could indeed retract the limbs 

 further under the table than their pendu- 

 lous motion would carry them, by the 

 agency of their flexor muscles, but she 

 could neither check their motion in this di- 

 rection, nor prolong it in the opposite one, 

 by any exertion of the extensors. Mr. 

 Hunter urged the patient to sit at intervals 



