Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/605

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OME years ago I made the following simple experiment: I arranged a rubber bulb, like that used for releasing a photographer's shutter, to connect with a bottle, from which rose a long, vertical glass tube. The bottle contained mercury, and the long tube reached nearly to the bottom. Every part was air-tight, so that when anybody squeezed the bulb the mercury was forced up the vertical tube. It was what is known as a mercury-dynamometer.

During experiments with this dynamometer, what was more natural than to think of trying what would happen if one hand were practiced daily in squeezing the bulb? So one of our graduate students. Miss E. M. Brown, was set to work in the following manner: On the first day she squeezed the bulb as hard as possible with the left hand, while an assistant noted the height of the mercury; this was repeated ten times, and the results were averaged. Immediately thereafter she took ten records with the right hand. Then, on the following days, with some intermissions, she practiced the right hand by squeezing ten times on each occasion. On the last day she again tested the left hand, which had not been practiced in the meantime. The records ran as follows:

Thus the left hand had gained about fifty per cent in strength through practice of the right hand. This peculiar phenomenon of transference of the effects of practice from one side to the other I have ventured to call "cross-education."

The phenomenon was curious enough to suggest other experiments. Another student. Miss T. L. Smith, was set to trying to insert the point of a needle at the end of a rod into a small hole in a drill-gauge without touching the sides. The first experiment consisted of twenty trials with the left hand, with a success of fifty per cent. Immediately thereafter twenty trials were made with the right hand, with a success of sixty per cent. On the following day and on each succeeding day two hundred experiments were made with the right hand, with successes of 61, 64, 65, 75, 74, 75,