The clicking muscle.

The adversaries of Spiritism have just made a discovery that must greatly vex the rapping Spirits; for them it is one of those blows of the club from which they will hardly recover. Indeed, what must these poor Spirits think of the terrible gash that Mr. Schiff has just dealt them, then Mr. Jobert, of Lamballe and, finally, Mr. Velpeau? I seem to see them quite bewildered, arguing more or less in this manner: “Well then, my dear fellow, we are in a fine fix! We are lost! We had not reckoned with anatomy, which has uncovered our tricks. Decidedly, there is no way to live in a country where there are people who see so clearly.” — Come now, you foolish gentlemen, who believed all these implausible tales; impostors who wished to make us believe in the existence of beings we do not see; ignorant ones who imagine there can exist something that escapes our scalpel, including your soul; and all of you, Spiritist or spiritualist writers, more or less witty, bow down and acknowledge that you are nothing but fools, charlatans, and even rogues and imbeciles: these gentlemen leave you the choice, for here is the light, the pure truth. “Academy of Sciences (Session of April 18, 1859.) — ON INVOLUNTARY RHYTHMIC MUSCULAR CONTRACTION. — Mr. Jobert (of Lamballe)

communicates a curious fact of involuntary rhythmic contraction of the right lateral lesser peroneus, which confirms Mr. Schiff’s opinion regarding the occult phenomenon of the rapping Spirits.

“Miss X, fourteen years old, strong, well constituted, has since the age of six been afflicted with regular involuntary movements of the right lateral lesser peroneus muscle and with raps that are heard behind the right external malleolus, with the regularity of the pulse. They first appeared in the right leg, during the night, accompanied by very strong pain. A short time afterward, the left lateral lesser peroneus was struck by an affection of the same nature, though of lesser intensity.

“The effect of these beats is to cause pain, to produce limping and even to provoke falls. The young patient declared to us that the extension of the foot and the compression exerted upon certain points of the foot and the leg do manage to stop them, though she continues to feel pains and fatigue in the limb.

“When this interesting creature presents herself to us, here is the state in which we find her: at the level of the right external malleolus, toward the upper edge of that bony prominence, it was easy to observe a regular beat, accompanied by a passing swelling and by a lifting of the soft parts of the region, which were followed by a dry noise occurring with each muscular contraction. This noise was heard in the bed, out of it, and at a quite considerable distance from the place where the young woman lay. Remarkable for its regularity and for its loudness, such a noise accompanied her everywhere. Applying the ear to the leg, the foot, or the malleolus, one could distinguish an unpleasant shock that ran along the whole course traveled by the muscle, exactly as though it were a blow transmitted from one end of a beam to the other. At times the noise resembled a rubbing, a scraping, whenever the contractions were less intense. These same phenomena always reproduced themselves, whether the patient was standing, sitting, or lying down, regardless of the hour of the day or night at which we examined her. “If we study the mechanism of the beats produced, and if, for greater clarity, we divide each beat into two stages, we shall see that:

“In the first stage the tendon of the lateral lesser peroneus is displaced, on leaving its groove, necessarily lifting the lateral greater peroneus and the skin.

“In the second stage, the phenomenon of contraction being accomplished, its tendon relaxes and moves in the groove, producing, against it, the dry and resonant noise of which we have just spoken.

“It repeated itself, so to speak, second by second, and each time the little toe felt a jolt and the skin covering the fifth metatarsal was lifted by the tendon. It ceased when the foot was strongly extended. It ceased, as well, when pressure was exerted upon the muscle or the sheath of the peronei.

“In these last years the French and foreign newspapers have spoken much of noises resembling hammer blows, now following one another with regularity, now adopting a particular rhythm, which were produced around certain persons lying in their bed.

“The charlatans seized upon these singular phenomena, whose reality, moreover, is attested by trustworthy witnesses. They tried to relate them to the intervention of a supernatural cause, making use of them to exploit public credulity.

“The observation of Miss X… shows how displaced tendons, at the moment when they return to the bony groove, can produce beats, under the influence of muscular contraction, thus announcing, for certain persons, the presence of rapping Spirits.

“By practicing, anyone can acquire the faculty of producing, at will, similar displacements of tendons and dry raps that are heard at a distance.

“Rejecting any idea of supernatural intervention and noting that these strange beats and noises always occurred at the foot of the bed of the individuals agitated by the Spirits, Mr. Schiff asked himself whether the seat of these noises might not be within themselves, rather than situated externally. His anatomical knowledge led him to think that it might well be in the leg, in the peroneal region, where one finds a bony surface, tendons, and a common sheath.

“This manner of seeing being well settled in his mind, he made experiments and attempts upon himself, which did not allow him to doubt that the noise had its seat behind the external malleolus and in the sheaths of the tendons of the peroneus.

“Soon Mr. Schiff was able to execute voluntary, regular, harmonious noises and, before a great number of persons, about fifty, he was able to imitate the prodigies of the rapping Spirits, with or without shoes, standing or lying down.

“Mr. Schiff concluded that all these noises originate in the tendon of the greater peroneus, when it passes through the peroneal groove, adding that they coexist with a thinning or absence of the common sheath of the greater and the lesser peroneus. As for us, while admitting at first that all these beats were produced by the fall of a tendon against the peroneal bony surface, we think, however, that there is no need for an anomaly of the sheath for us to perceive them. The contraction of the muscle, the displacement of the tendon, and its return to the groove suffice for the noise to occur. Moreover, the lesser peroneus alone is the agent of the noise in question. Indeed, it displays a straighter direction than the greater peroneus, which undergoes several deviations in its course; it is situated deeply in the groove; it completely covers the bony groove, it being natural for us to conclude that the noise is produced by the shock of this tendon against the solid parts of the groove; it presents muscular fibers right up to the entry of the tendon into the common groove, whereas the opposite occurs with the greater peroneus. “The noise is variable in its intensity and, indeed, in it we can distinguish various shades. It is thus that, from the strident sound, which is perceived at a distance, we find varieties of noises, of rubbings, of sawing, etc.

“Using the subcutaneous method we made repeated incisions through the body of the right lateral lesser peroneus and into the body of the same muscle on the left side of our patient, and we kept the limbs immobilized with the aid of an apparatus. The parts being reunited, the functions of the two limbs were restored without any trace of that singular and rare affection.

“Mr. Velpeau. — The noises which Mr. Jobert has just treated in his interesting communication seem linked to a very vast question. Indeed, these same noises are observed in various regions. The hip, the shoulder, the inner side of the foot frequently become the seat of them. Among others I saw a lady who, aided by certain rotational movements of the thigh, produced a kind of music quite manifest enough to be heard from one side of the drawing room to the other. The tendon of the long portion of the biceps brachii produces it easily on leaving its sheath, when the fibrous bundles that naturally retain it relax or rupture. The same happens with the posterior muscle of the leg or with the flexor muscle of the great toe, behind the internal malleolus. Such noises are explained, as Messrs. Schiff and Jobert have well understood, by the friction or by the sudden jolts of the tendons in the grooves or against the edges of the synovial surfaces. Consequently, they are possible in an infinity of regions or in the vicinity of a number of organs. Now clear and well audible, now dull or obscure, sometimes moist, other times dry, they vary, moreover, extremely in intensity. “Let us hope that the example given on this subject by Messrs. Schiff and Jobert will lead physiologists to occupy themselves seriously with these various noises and that one day they will give the rational explanation of phenomena that are not understood or have until now been attributed to occult and supernatural causes.

“Mr. Jules Cloquet. — In support of Mr. Velpeau’s observations on the abnormal noises that tendons can produce in the various regions of the body, he cites the example of a girl of sixteen to eighteen years who was presented to him at the Saint-Louis Hospital, at a time when Messrs. Velpeau and Jobert were attached to that same establishment. The girl’s father, who styled himself the father of a phenomenon, a sort of mountebank, hoped to profit from his daughter by exhibiting her publicly. He announced that she had in her belly a movement like that of a pendulum. The girl was perfectly formed. By a slight rotational movement in the lumbar region of the vertebral column, she produced very loud clicks, more or less regular, according to the rhythm of slight movements that she imparted to the lower part of the trunk. These abnormal noises could be heard perfectly at more than twenty-five feet of distance and resembled the noise of the old roasting machines; they were interrupted at the girl’s will and seemed to have their seat in the muscles of the lumbo-dorsal region of the vertebral column.” Taken from the Abeille médicale — Google Books, we deem it our duty to transcribe this article in its entirety for the edification of our readers, so as not to be accused of wishing to evade certain arguments that it contains. With some variations, it was reproduced in different newspapers, accompanied by the customary epithets. We are not in the habit of highlighting the rudenesses; we set them aside, because our good sense tells us that nothing is proved with foolishness and insults, however learned one may be. Had the article in question limited itself to banalities, which are not always marked by the stamp of urbanity and good breeding, we would not have mentioned it. But it treats the question from the scientific point of view; it overwhelms us with demonstrations, with which it claims to pulverize us; let us see, then, whether we are indeed dead by the decree of the Academy of Sciences, or whether we have some chance of living, like the poor madman Fulton, whose system was declared an empty and impracticable dream by the Institute, which merely deprived France of the initiative of the steamship; and who knows what consequences such a power, in the hands of Napoleon I, might have brought to bear upon later events!

We shall make only a brief remark on the qualification of charlatans, attributed to the partisans of the new ideas. It seems to us somewhat rash, when it is applied to millions of creatures who derive no profit whatever from them and when it reaches the highest ranks of the social scale. They forget that Spiritism has made, in a few years, incredible progress in all parts of the world; that it does not propagate among the ignorant, but in the bosom of the enlightened classes; that it counts in its ranks a great number of physicians, magistrates, ecclesiastics, artists, men of letters, and high officials, persons to whom one generally grants some lights and a minimum of good sense. Now, to confound them in the same anathema and to dispatch them without any ceremony to the asylums is to act with excessive overbearance. But, you will say, these are creatures of good faith, victims of an illusion; we do not deny the effect, we only contest the cause that you attribute to it. Science has just discovered the true cause, making it known and, by that very fact, causing to collapse this whole altar of mystical fantasies of an invisible world, which can seduce exalted, though sincere, imaginations.

We do not boast of wisdom, nor much less would we dare to place ourselves on the same level as our honorable adversaries. We will say only that our personal studies of anatomy and of the physical and natural sciences, which we have had the honor of teaching, allow us to understand their theory, and that we in no way feel dazed by this avalanche of technical verbiage. The phenomena of which they speak are perfectly known to us. In our observations on the effects attributed to invisible beings we took care not to neglect so patent a cause for contempt. When a fact presents itself, we do not content ourselves with a single observation; we wish to see it from all angles, under all faces and, before accepting a theory, we consider whether it corresponds to all the circumstances, whether no unknown fact will come to contradict it; in a word, whether it resolves all the questions. Truth has its price. You will readily admit, gentlemen, that this manner of proceeding is quite logical. Well then! Despite all the respect due to your learning, some difficulties present themselves in the application of your system to what one is accustomed to call rapping Spirits. In the first place, it is at the very least singular that this faculty, until now exceptional and regarded as a pathological case, qualified by Mr. Jobert (of Lamballe) as a rare and singular affection, should suddenly have become so common. It is true that Mr. de Lamballe says that any man can acquire it by practice; but as he also affirmed that it is accompanied by pain and fatigue, which is quite natural, one must agree that we would need to have a very strong will to mystify in order to make our muscle click for two or three hours on end, when it leads to nothing, and for the mere pleasure of amusing people. But let us speak seriously. This is more grave, because it is science. These gentlemen, who have discovered this marvelous property of the greater peroneus, have no suspicion whatever of all that this muscle can do. Now, here is a fine problem to solve. The displaced tendons do not strike only in the bony grooves; by a truly bizarre effect, they also go to strike on the doors, walls, and ceilings, and that at will, in exactly the designated places. But if you want something still stronger, see how far Science was from suspecting all the virtues of this clicking muscle: it has the power to lift a table without touching it, to make it walk with its feet, to walk across the room, to hold itself in space without a point of support; to open it and to close it and — judge with what force! — to make it break itself by tumbling to the floor. Do you think it is a fragile table, light as a feather, that one lifts with a breath? Wake up, gentlemen, these are heavy and massive tables, of fifty to sixty kilos, that obey young lasses and children. But, Mr. Schiff will say, I have never seen these prodigies. That is easy to understand: he was willing to see only the legs. In his observations did Mr. Schiff consider the necessary independence of ideas? Was he free of any prejudice? We have the right to doubt it; and it is not we who say so, it is Mr. Jobert. According to him, Mr. Schiff asked, in speaking of mediums, whether the seat of these noises was not preferably within them, and not outside them; his anatomical knowledge led him to think that it might well be in the leg. This manner of seeing being well settled in his mind, etc. Thus, according to Mr. Jobert’s own admission, Mr. Schiff took as his point of departure not the facts, but his own idea, his preconceived idea, well settled. Hence the research in an exclusive direction and, consequently, an exclusive theory which perfectly explains the fact that he saw, but not those he did not see. And why did he not see them? Because in his thinking there was only one true point of departure, and one true explanation. Starting from there, all the rest had to be false and did not deserve examination. From this it resulted that, in his eagerness to destroy the mediums, he missed the mark. Gentlemen, you imagine that you know all the virtues of the greater peroneus because you caught it playing the guitar in its sheath? Come, come! Here is something quite different to record in the annals of anatomy. You thought the brain was the seat of thought. Wrong! One can think with the ankle. The raps give proofs of intelligence; therefore, whether these blows come exclusively from the peroneus, whether they come from the greater peroneus, according to Mr. Schiff, whether they come from the lesser, according to Mr. Jobert — they would need to come to an understanding on the matter — it is because the peroneus is intelligent. There is nothing surprising in this. Making his muscle click at will, the medium will execute whatever you wish: he will imitate the saw, the hammer, he will beat the call to arms and the rhythm of a requested air. So be it! But when the noise answers something that the medium completely ignores; when it reveals little secrets that you alone know, secrets that we would wish to hide from our own shadow, one must agree that the thought comes from somewhere other than the brain. Where, then, will it come from? Good God in heaven! From the greater peroneus. And that is not all: this greater peroneus is also a poet, since it can compose charming verses, even though the medium has never made any in his life; it is a polyglot, because it dictates things that are truly very sensible, in languages of which the medium does not know a single word; it is a musician… we know this well, for Mr. Schiff made his execute harmonious sounds, with or without shoes, before fifty persons. Yes; but it also composes. You, Mr. Dorgeval, who lately gave us a charming sonata, do you really believe that it was the Spirit of Mozart who dictated it to you? Wake up: it was your greater peroneus that was playing the piano. In truth, gentlemen mediums, you had no suspicion of possessing so much wit in your heels. Glory, then, to those who made this discovery; may their names be inscribed in capital letters for the edification of posterity and the honor of their memory! They will say that we are jesting about serious things. But jests are not arguments, just as foolishness and rudeness are not arguments either. Confessing our ignorance before these gentlemen, we accept their learned demonstration and take it very seriously. We thought that certain phenomena were produced by invisible beings who gave themselves the name of Spirits; it is possible that we were mistaken. As we seek the truth, we do not entertain the ridiculous pretension of insisting on an idea which, in so peremptory a manner, they demonstrate to us to be false. Since Mr. Jobert, by means of a subcutaneous incision, has undermined the Spirits, it is because there are no longer any Spirits. Considering that, according to him, all the noises come from the peroneus, one must believe it and admit it in all its consequences. Thus, when the raps are given on the wall or on the ceiling, either the peroneus corresponds to them or the wall has a peroneus; when these blows dictate verses through a table that beats its foot, one of two things: either the table is a poetess or the peroneus is a poet. This seems logical to us. We will go even further: one day when he was performing Spiritist experiments, an officer of our acquaintance received, by an invisible hand, a pair of slaps so well applied that he still felt them two hours later. Now, how is one to obtain redress? If a similar fact were to happen to Mr. Jobert, he would not be troubled: he would simply say he had been assaulted by the greater peroneus. Here is what we read on this subject in the newspaper La Mode, of May 1, 1859:

“The Academy of Medicine continues the crusade of the positive spirits against the marvelous of every kind. After having, with good reason, but perhaps a bit clumsily, thundered against the famous black doctor, through the voice of Mr. Velpeau, here it has just heard Mr. Jobert (of Lamballe) declare, in the full Institute, the secret of what he calls the great comedy of the rapping Spirits, which has been performed with so much success in the two hemispheres.

“According to the celebrated surgeon, every tap tap, every bang bang that makes the people who hear them tremble; all these singular noises, these dry blows, struck successively and as though cadenced, precursors of the arrival, evident signs of the presence of the inhabitants of the other world, result simply from a movement imparted to a muscle, to a nerve, to a tendon! It is a quirk of Nature, skillfully exploited to produce, without its being possible to ascertain it, this mysterious music that has charmed and seduced so many people.

“The seat of the orchestra is in the leg. It is the tendon of the peroneus, playing inside the sheath, that produces all these noises that are heard beneath the tables or at a distance, at the pleasure of the conjurer.

“For my part I much doubt that Mr. Jobert has laid his hand, as he imagines, on the secret of what he himself calls “a comedy,” it seeming to me that the articles published in this same newspaper, by our colleague Mr. Escande, on the mysteries of the occult world, present the question with a quite different breadth, sincere and philosophical, in the good sense of the word.

“Meanwhile, if the charlatans of every shade are bothersome for the noise they make, we must agree that these learned gentlemen are sometimes no less so, with the sponge they claim to apply over everything that escapes the brilliance of the official candelabra.

“They do not understand that the seat of the marvelous, which devours our epoch, is owed precisely to the excesses of the positivism into which certain minds wished to drag it. The human soul has need to believe, to admire, and to contemplate the infinite. They have labored to close the windows that Catholicism opened to it; for this reason it looks through the skylights, whatever they may be.”

Henry de Pène.

“Our excellent friend, Mr. Henry de Pène, will certainly permit us a remark. We are unaware when Mr. Jobert made this immortal discovery and on what memorable day he communicated it to the Institute. What we do know is that this original explanation had already been given by others. In 1854, Dr. Rayer, a celebrated clinician, who at that time gave no proof of great perspicacity, also presented, to the Institute, a German, whose skill, according to him, gave the key to all the knockings and rappings of the two worlds. It was a matter, as today, of the displacement of one of the muscular tendons of the leg, called the greater peroneus.

His demonstration was made in a session and the Academy expressed its gratitude by means of that interesting communication. A few days later, a substitute professor of the Faculty of Medicine recorded the fact in the newspaper Constitutionnel and had the courage to add that “at last the scientists had pronounced themselves and the mystery was cleared up.” This declaration did not prevent the mystery from persisting and increasing, in spite of Science which, refusing to perform experiments, contented itself with attacking it by means of ridiculous and burlesque explanations, like these to which we have just referred. Out of respect for Mr. Jobert (of Lamballe), it pleases us to think that they have attributed to him an experiment that absolutely does not belong to him. Some newspaper, eager for novelties, will have found in some forgotten corner of his portfolio the old communication of Mr. Rayer and will have resurrected it, publishing it under his sponsorship, in order to vary things a little. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur [With the name changed, the tale is told of you.] It is lamentable, no doubt, but it is still better than if the newspaper had told the truth.”

A. Escande.

[1]

[v. Henry de Pène.]