title: A human quadrupedal gait following poliomyelitis: From the Dercum-Muybridge collaboration (1885).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Beginning in the late 1870s, before the invention of movie cameras or projectors, pioneering English American photographer Eadweard Muybridge photographed iconic image sequences of people and animals in motion using arrays of sequentially triggered single-image cameras. In 1885, Philadelphia neurologist Francis Dercum initiated a collaborative relationship with Muybridge at the University of Pennsylvania to photograph sequential images of patients with various neurologic disorders of movement, including an acquired pathologic quadrupedal gait in a young boy that developed as a consequence of poliomyelitis.
  
  
  METHODS
  This pathologic human quadrupedal gait was compared with other quadrupedal gaits filmed by Muybridge, including a toddler girl and an adult woman crawling on hands and knees, an adult woman bear crawling on hands and feet, and a baboon walking.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All of the human quadrupedal gaits were lateral sequence gaits, whereas the baboon's walking gait was a diagonal sequence gait. Modern studies have confirmed the nonpathologic quadrupedal gait sequences of humans and nonhuman primates.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite Dercum's assertion to the contrary, the limb placement pattern of the boy with a pathologic quadrupedal gait after poliomyelitis was not the typical gait of a primate quadruped, but rather was the typical gait sequence for normal human developmental and volitional quadrupedal gaits.
authors.affiliation: From the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes VA Healthcare System, Tomah, WI. douglas.lanska@va.gov.
authors.forename: Douglas J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Lanska
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020233:Gait Disorders, Neurologic / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D010414:Pennsylvania; D010781:Photography / Q000266:history*; D011051:Poliomyelitis / Q000266:history*