The movement in the synovial joint can be classified as follows:

a. Flexion is the decrease in the angle between adjoining bones, as bending the elbow or moving the thigh forward and
upward.
b. Extension is the straightening of the body part with an increase in the angle between the adjoining bones, such as
straightening the arm or leg.
c. Rotation involves turning or moving on an axis without any displacement of the axis as the rotation of the radius
within the radial notch of the ulna.
Because of ligaments and muscles, rotation is restricted in most cases.

Have the proportions of the human body ever been analysed?

As far as we know, the earliest attempts to analyse the proportions of the human body were made by the Egyptians.
They used the hand and the foot as basic units of measurement and these units have remained in active use for over five
thousand years, in such words as inches, feet and yards.
During the Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, and many others pondered the same problem.
Leonardo da Vinci attempted to place a figure in a concentric square and circle. The height of the head is taken as unit,
one head from the crown to the chin, two heads to the nipple, three to the navel, and four to the crotch. From the centre
line outward: one head to the shoulder, two to the elbow, and four to the finger tips.
Michelangelo’s statues are eight heads high. Bodies of the gothic period of art stand nine heads tall. El Greco drew his
elongated figures ten heads tall.

The skeletal muscles

1. The skeletal muscles, which number over 400, are responsible for the movement of the body and its parts. They
account for about 40 per cent of the total body weight.
2. How did Claude Bernard prove that muscle possesses independent irritability? He carried out experiments with a drug
curare. Some tribes of South American Indians used curare on the tips of their arrows in order to paralyse their enemies.
Claude Bernard observed that after exposure to curare, the muscle responds by direct stimulation only, the impulses
from its Cerve having no effect.
3. If a striated muscle is stimulated electrically with intensities between minimal and maximal, a graded response is
obtained.
4. Since Bowditch’s discovery in 1871, it has been discovered that the contraction of the heart muscle is the same for a
weak stimulus as for the strongest that can be applied safely. This phenomenon is the basis for the all-or-none law; the
heart gives a maximum contraction to a stimulus or else it does not contract at all.
5. Oxygen is not essential for the contraction of muscles, but rather for its recovery. Lactic acid, which forms during
contraction, disappears only in the presence of oxygen.
6. In fatigue, it appears that muscles use up their immediate supply of fuel (glycogen) or that the waste products which
have collected during contraction in some way cause the muscle to “fatigue”. However, the accumulation of waste
products is not the only factor in the onset of fatigue. Perhaps changes in the physicochemical state of the muscle are
more directly responsible.
7. The Hungarian biochemist Szent-Györgyi (who was awarded a Nobel Prize for isolating vitamin C) was able to make
an “artificial muscle” out of myosin. Just like a natural muscle fibre, Szent-Györgyi’s artificial muscle fibre contracted
when properly stimulated.
In a natural muscle, hundreds of fibres are united into a cigar-shaped form provided with nerves and fed by blood vessels.
Just as the electric wires in our homes lead to heaters, electric lamps or bells, so our motor nerves run to the muscles
and end there in “electrodes”. With each nerve impulse, these electrodes manufacture a chemical compound,
acetylcholine, which has a stimulating effect. Not long after the discovery of this “nerve hormone”, a substance was
discovered that could neutralise its stimulating effect. This substance, which belong to the family of curare, paralyses
the nerves.
8. Let’s learn some of the muscles by looking at the Discus thrower.
Let’s look at this cross section of a famous classical sculpture, showing some of the many muscles involved in a single
action.