People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — THE GRIPMAN’S ARM. [ARTICLE]

THE GRIPMAN’S ARM.

Work at the Lever Makes HU Bleeps Grow to Mammeth Proportion*. The introduction of cable cars in this city has been responsible for the rearing of. a peculiar race of people, says the Philadelphia Record. Every gripman employed by the Traction Company finds himself so peculiarly developed after a few months’ work at the lever that one-half of him would weigh about twice as much as the other. A West Philadelphia physician tells of a frail young man of his cleintele who accepted a place in the bay window of a cable car. After six weeks of work at the lever he came puffing and panting to the doctor’s office one evening to say that he was suffering from a one-sided case of elephantiasis. He hastily stripped to the waist and showed one arm that would be the glory of a prizefighter, while any girl ’would be ashamed to display the other one because of its puny outlines. The young man was assured that his malady was not at all serious, and was nothing bnt an overdevelopment of one arm by constant exercise. It is known by physicians as the “gripman’s arm.” The arm of this particular gripman continued to greyv until it became so weighty that he said that it was only with difficulty that he could walk straight. This same condition of affairs is experienced by clerks and persons employed much at desk work. In this instance the right shoulder is several inches above the level of the other one, and the deformity can only be hidden by the tailor, who puts an extra layer of padding in the other shoulder.