Supplementary materials:

A human quadrupedal gait following poliomyelitis:

From the Dercum-Muybridge collaboration (1885)

Douglas J. Lanska, M.D., M.S, M.S.P.H., F.A.A.N.

Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes Healthcare System, Tomah, WI

Douglas.Lanska@va.gov

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Part 1: Portraits of Muybridge and Dercum

Figure e-1: American photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904).

Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952). Courtesy of the U.S.

Library of Congress. Public domain.

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Figure e-2. Philadelphia neurologist Francis Xavier Dercum (1856-1931).

Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Public domain.

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Part 2: Muybridge’s photographic sequences of quadrupedal gaits in

normal humans and baboons.

Figure e-3. Lateral sequential images of a toddler girl crawling, as photographed

by Eadweard Muybridge at the University of Pennsylvania in 1885. The images

are a portion of the images from Plate 471 in Muybridge's Animal Locomotion

(Muybridge, 1887). This ia a lateral-sequence/diagonal-couplet (LSDC) gait.

The anterior and posterior views are not included here because there are no cor-

responding anterior or posterior images of the boy with a quadrupedal gait after

surviving poliomyelitis (Muybridge Plate 539); nevertheless, the anterior and pos-

terior views were also reviewed to validate the limb-placement sequence. Public

domain. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library and available either through Wiki-

media Commons or Digital Commonwealth Massachusetts Collections Online.1

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

 

1 These images are also available from the Library of Congress.

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Figure e-4. Lateral sequential images of a woman crawling, as photographed by

Eadweard Muybridge at the University of Pennsylvania in 1885. The images are

a portion of the images from Plate 182 in Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (Muy-

bridge, 1887). This ia a lateral-sequence/diagonal-couplet (LSDC) gait. The an-

terior and posterior (postero-lateral) views are not included here because there

are no corresponding anterior or posterior images of the boy with a quadrupedal

gait after surviving poliomyelitis (Muybridge Plate 539); nevertheless, the anterior

and posterior views were also reviewed to validate the limb-placement sequence.

Public domain. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library and available either through

Wikimedia Commons or Digital Commonwealth Massachusetts Collections On-

line.1 Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Figure e-5. Lateral sequential images of a woman crawling on hands and feet

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(“bear crawling”), as photographed by Eadweard Muybridge at the University of

Pennsylvania in 1885. The images are a portion of the images from Plate 183 in

Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (Muybridge, 1887a). This a lateral-sequence/lat-

eral-couplet (LSLC) gait. For this sequence, Muybridge did not publish anerior or

posterior views. Public domain. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library and avail-

able either through Wikimedia Commons or Digital Commonwealth Massachu-

setts Collections Online.1 Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Figure e-6. Sequential images of a baboon walking, as photographed by

Eadweard Muybridge at the University of Pennsylvania in 1885. The images are

from Plate 747 in Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (Muybridge, 1887). The

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baboon has been induced to walk forward with the aid of a string attached to a

collar around its neck; the string and collar are faintly visible in several of the

photographic images in this sequence. The baboon uses a

diagonal-sequence/diagonal-couplet (DSDC) gait, which is the preferred walking

gait among non-human primates. For this sequence, Muybridge did not publish

anerior or posterior views. Public domain. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Prints and Photographs Division.

Figure e-7. Tracings derived from Muybridge’s plate 747 of a baboon walking

(images 5-8, and 11-14) in a study of animal gaits by Harrison Allen, Emeritus

Professor of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, that was published

under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania (Allen 1888) shortly after

the publiation of Muybridge’s magnum opus (Muybridge 1887). These images

emphasize several key phases of the baboon’s walk, and also eliminate the

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redundant images resulting from including more than a full gait cycle in the

original photographic sequence.2 These images were originally presented as

separate figures, but have been resized and combined in a montage (by DJL)

that corresponds to the layout on Muybridge’s plate 747, rows 2 through 4.

Public domain. Courtesy of Google Books.

Figure e-8. Sequential images of a baboon walking, as photographed by Ead-

weard Muybridge at the University of Pennsylvania in 1885. The images are

from Plate 748 in Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (Muybridge, 1887). The ba-

boon has been induced to walk forward with the aid of a string attached to a col-

lar around its neck; the string and collar are faintly visible in several of the photo-

graphic images in this sequence. The baboon uses a diagonal-sequence/diago-

nal-couplet (DSDC) gait, which is the preferred walking gait among non-human

primates. For this sequence, Muybridge did not publish anerior or posterior

2 The gait cycle starts when one foot makes contact with the ground and ends when that same foot contacts the ground again.

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views. Public domain. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo-

graphs Division.

Figure e-9: Zoopraxiscope disc of a baboon walking, derived from the

sequential photographs of a baboon that was photographed by Muybridge in

1885 at the University of Pennsylvania (Plate 748). Drawings were made from

each of the sequential photographic images in Muybridge’s plate 748 through

one full gait cycle (with redundant images ignored) (Muybridge 1893). Public

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domain. Courtesy of Google Books.

In 1892 Muybridge had been invited by the Fine Arts Commission of the

the World's Columbian to give a series of lectures on “zoopraxography”

(Muybridge 1893). The World's Columbian Exposition was the official shortened

name for the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago

World's Fair, which was held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th

anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.

For this purpose, Muybridge prepared a series of discs with drawings or tracings

derived from his sequential photographs of humans and animals in motion.

These discs were spun in front of a projection device so that the sequential

images appeared as a fairly smooth sequence of movement:

“In the presentation of a Lecture on Zoöpraxography the course usually

adopted is to project, much larger than the size of life upon a screen, a series

of the most important phases of some act of animal motion—the stride of a

horse, while galloping for example—which are analytically described. These

successive phases are then combined in the Zoöpraxiscope, which is set in

motion, and a reproduction of the original movements of life is distinctly visible

to the audience.” (Muybridge 1893)

One of the discs projected was that of a walking baboon which was derived from

Plate 747 of Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion (1887) (Figure). This disc was

included in Muybridge’s Descriptive Zoopraxography, or the Science of Animal

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Locomotion made Popular (1893).3

None of the discs that Muybridge projected in his public talks corresponded to

pathologic human gaits.

References:

Allen H. Materials for a memoir on animal locomation. In: Animal Locomotion:

The Muybridge Work at the University of Pennsylvania: The Method and the

Result. Philadelphia: J.B.Lippincott Co, 1888:35-101.

Muybridge E. Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of

Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885. Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania, 1887a.

Muybridge E. Descriptive Zoopraxography, or the Science of Animal Locomotion

Made Popular: With Selected Outline Tracings reduced from some of the

Illustrations of “Animal Locomotion”: An Electro-photographic Investigation of

Consecutive Phases of Animal Movemets, Commenced 1872, Completed 1885,

and Published 1887, under the Auspices of the University of Pennsylvania:

Published as a Memento of a Series of Lectures Given by the Author under the

Auspices of the United States Government. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania, 1893.

3 An gif animation of a baboon walking, which was produced from this zoopraxiscope disc, is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Descriptive_Zoopraxography_Baboon_Walking_Animated_13.gif

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Muybridge EJ. Animals in Motion. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1899.

[Republished Brown LS (ed.) New York, Dover Publishing Co., 1957.]

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Part 3: Late twentieth-century reports of quadrupedal gaits in polio

survivors

Recent examples of hands-and-knees crawling and “bear crawl” gaits in adults

who survived poliomyelitis as children have been identified in various countries

during the late twwentieth century, including Democratic Republic of the Congo

(formerly Zaire) (Atkey 2006; International Polio Victims Response Committee,

undated; Oliver 2013), India (Chhabra 2011, Lindell 2012), Mexico (Wagar 2015),

Turkey (Tab 2007; Tan & Tan 2009), Nigeria (Anonymous 2012), Solomon

Islands (Anonymous 2008), Uganda (Banura 2011), the United States (Bailey

1986), and Vietnam (Viraq 1987). Most of these cases have been identified in

Africa and Asia. Almost all of these reports are from the lay press. Some of

these reports provide no photographic documentation, while the others show only

static hand-and-knees or hands-and-feet postures; none shows a sequence of

ambulation or describes the gaits in any detail, so it is impossible to further

characterize the gaits from these sources. In some of these modern cases,

severe wasting of the legs and hips is evident in the static images, sometimes

with back-kneeing (genu recurvatum) (e.g., Virag 1987).

References:

Anonymous. 3-H offshoot: Polio rehabilitation. The Rotarian 1951;July:45-46.

Anonymous. Accepting life as polio victim. Solomon Times Online. May 6,

2008.http://www.solomontimes.com/news/accepting-life-as-polio-victim/1733

[Accessed 7-22-15]

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Anonymous. Polio: a personal experience. July 28, 2012.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/polio-a-personal-experience/ [Accessed

7-22-15]

Atkey J. Braces and more for polio survivors in the Democratic Republic of

Congo. Post-Polio Health 2006;22(1):1-2.

http://www.post-polio.org/edu/pphnews/pph22-1p1-2.pdf [Accessed 7-26-15]

Bailey M. Polio’s aftereffects return to haunt vicitms. Orlando Sentinel [Orlando

FL]. March 16, 1986.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1986-03-16/lifestyle/0200460288_1_post-

polio-syndrome-polio-survivor-post-polio/2 [Accessed 7-22-15]

Banura B. What it means to move around on all fours. Daily Monitor. December

14, 2011. [Accessed 7-22-15].

Chhabra E. Removing the challenging barriers facing polio victims. Ventura

County Star [Ventura, CA]. April 30, 2011.

http://www.vcstar.com/opinion/chhabra-removing-the-challenging-barriers-facing

[Accessed 7-22-15]

International Polio Victims Response Committee. Project: Treatment for 100

youth with disabilities in Congo. [Undated].

https://www.globalgiving.org/pfil/1720/projdoc.pdf [Accessed 7-22-15]

Lindell R. India marks first year without new polio cases. February 29, 2012.

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http://australiaplus.com/international/2012-01-13/410910 [Accessed 7-22-15]

Oliver G. Standing up against polio in DRC. August 13, 2013.

http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/standing-against-polio-drc

[Accessed 7-22-15]

Tan U. A wrist-walker exhibiting no “Uner Tan syndrome”: A theory for possible

mechanisms of human devolution toward the atavistic walking patterns. Int J

Neurosci 2007;117:147-156.

Tan U, Tan M. A new variant of Unertan syndrome: running on all fours in two

upright-walking children. Int J Neuroscie 2009;119;909-918.

Virag I. Life and times of Le Van Minh. www.irenevirag.com/media/saig_sm.pdf

Newsday. June 5, 1987. [Accessed 7-21-15]

Wagar L. Man in need of help gets a leg up from Problem Solvers. Fox 4

[Kansas City, MO]. March 4, 2015. http://fox4kc.com/2015/03/04/man-in-need-

of-help-gets-a-leg-up-from-problem-solvers/ [Accessed 7-22-15]

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