Chapter II: Part 2

_A Loose Cartilage, or a Displaced Cartilage in the Knee Joint_ is apt
to become caught in the hinge between the thigh bone and the leg bone,
and by causing a sudden stretching of the ligaments of the joint to
give rise to intense pain. When this happens the individual is apt to
be thrown down as he walks, for it comes on with great suddenness. And
thus he feels himself to be in a condition of perpetual insecurity.
After the joint has thus gone wrong, bleeding and serous effusion take
place into it, and it becomes greatly swollen. And if the cartilage
still remains in the grip of the bones he is unable to straighten or
bend his knee. But the surgeon by suddenly flexing and twisting the
leg may manage to unhitch the cartilage and restore comfort and
usefulness to the limb. As a rule, the slipping of a cartilage first
occurs as the result of a serious fall or of a sudden and violent
action--often it happens when the man is "dodging" at football, the
foot being firmly fixed on the ground and the body being violently
twisted at the knee. After the slipping has occurred many times, the
amount of swelling, distress and lameness may diminish with each
subsequent slipping, and the individual may become somewhat reconciled
to his condition. As regards _treatment_, a tightly fitting steel
cage-like splint, which, gripping the thigh and leg, limits the
movements of the knee to flexion and extension, may prove useful. But
for a muscular, athletic individual the wearing of this apparatus may
prove vexatious and disappointing. The only alternative is to open the
joint and remove the loose cartilage. The cartilage may be found on
operation to be split, torn or crumpled, and lying right across
between the joint-surfaces of the bones, from which nothing but an
operation could possibly have removed it. The operation is almost sure
to give complete and permanent relief to the condition, the individual
being able to resume his old exercises and amusements without fear of
the knee playing him false. It is, however, one that should not be
undertaken without due consideration and circumspection, and the
details of the operation should be carried out with the utmost care
and cleanliness.

An accidental _wound of a joint_, as from the blade of a knife, or a
spike, entering the knee is a very serious affair, because of the risk
of septic germs entering the synovial cavity either at the time of the
injury or later. If the joint becomes thus infected there is great
swelling of the part, with redness of the skin, and with the escape of
blood-stained or purulent synovia. Absorption takes place of the
poisonous substances produced by the action of the germs, and, as a
result, great constitutional disturbance arises. Blood-poisoning may
thus threaten life, and in many cases life is saved only by
amputation. The best treatment is freely to open the joint, to wash it
out with a strong antiseptic fluid, and to make arrangement for
thorough drainage, the limb being fixed on a splint. Help may also be
obtained by increasing the patient's power of resistance to the effect
of the poisoning by injections of a serum prepared by cultivation of
the septic germs in question. If the limb is saved, there is a great
chance of the knee being permanently stiff.

_Dislocation._--The ease with which the joint-end of a bone is
dislocated varies with its form and structure, and with the position
in which it happens to be placed when the violence is applied. The
relative frequency of fracture of the bone and dislocation of the
joint depends on the strength of the bones above and below the joint
relatively to the strength of the joint itself. The strength of the
various joints in the body is dependent upon either ligament or
muscle, or upon the shape of the bones. In the hip, for instance, all
three sources of strength are present; therefore, considering the
great leverage of the long thigh bone, the hip is rarely dislocated.
The shoulder, in order to allow of extensive movement, has no osseus
or ligamentous strength; it is, therefore, frequently dislocated. The
wrist and ankle are rarely dislocated; as the result of violence at
the wrist the radius gives way, at the ankle the fibula, these bones
being relatively weaker than the respective joints. The wrist owes its
strength to ligaments, the elbow and the ankle to the shape of the
bones. The symptoms of a dislocation are distortion and limited
movement, with absence of the grating sensation felt in fracture when
the broken ends of the bone are rubbed together. The treatment
consists in reducing the dislocation, and the sooner this replacement
is effected the better--the longer the delay the more difficult it
becomes to put things right. After a variable period, depending on the
nature of the joint and the age of the person, it may be impossible to
replace the bones. The result will be a more or less useless joint.
The administration of an anaesthetic, by relaxing the muscles, greatly
assists the operation of reduction. The length of time that a joint
has to be kept quiet after it has been restored to its normal shape
depends on its form, but, as a rule, early movement is advisable. But
when by the formation of the bones a joint is weak, as at the outer
end of the collar-bone, and at the elbow-end of the radius, prolonged
rest for the joint is necessary or dislocation may recur.

_Congenital Dislocation at the Hip._--Possibly as a result of faulty
position of the subject during intra-uterine life, the head of the
thigh-bone leaves, or fails throughout to occupy, its normal situation
on the haunch-bone. The defect, which is a very serious one, is
probably not discovered until the child begins to walk, when its
peculiar rolling gait attracts attention. The want of fixation at the
joint permits of the surgeon thrusting up the thigh-bone, or drawing
it down in a painless, characteristic manner.

The first thing to be done is to find out by means of the X-rays
whether a socket exists into which, under an anaesthetic, the surgeon
may fortunately be enabled to lodge the end of the thigh-bone. If this
offers no prospect of success, there are three courses open: First,
to try under an anaesthetic to manipulate the limb until the head of
the thigh-bone rests as nearly as possible in its normal position, and
then to endeavour to fix it there by splints, weights and bandaging
until a new joint is formed; second, to cut down upon the site of the
joint, to scoop out a new socket in the haunch-bone, and thrust the
end of the thigh-bone into it, keeping it fixed there as just
described; and third, to allow the child to run about as it pleases,
merely raising the sole of the foot of the short leg by a thick boot,
so as to keep the lower part of the trunk fairly level, lest secondary
curvature of the spine ensue. The first and second methods demand many
months of careful treatment in bed. The ultimate result of the second
is so often disappointing that the surgeon now rarely advises its
adoption. But, if under an anaesthetic, as the result of skilful
manipulation the head of the thigh-bone can be made to enter a more or
less rudimentary socket, the case is worth all the time, care and
attention bestowed upon it. Sometimes the results of prolonged
treatment are so good that the child eventually is able to walk with
scarce a limp. But a vigorous attempt at placing the head of the bone
in its proper position should be made in every case. (E. O.*)

JOINTS, in engineering, may be classed either (a) according to their material, as in stone or brick, wood or metal; or (b) according to their object, to prevent leakage of air, steam or water, or to transmit force, which may be thrust, pull or shear; or (c) according as they are stationary or moving ("working" in technical language). Many joints, like those of ship-plates and boiler-plates, have simultaneously to fulfil both objects mentioned under (b).

All stone joints of any consequence are stationary. It being uneconomical to dress the surfaces of the stones resting on each other smoothly and so as to be accurately flat, a layer of mortar or other cementing material is laid between them. This hardens and serves to transmit the pressure from stone to stone without its being concentrated at the "high places." If the ingredients of the cement are chosen so that when hard the cement has about the same coefficient of compressibility as the stone or brick, the pressure will be nearly uniformly distributed. The cement also adheres to the surfaces of the stone or brick, and allows a certain amount of tension to be borne by the joint. It likewise prevents the stones from slipping one on the other, i.e. it gives the joint very considerable shearing strength. The composition of the cement is chosen according as it has to "set" in air or water. The joints are made impervious to air or water by "pointing" their outer edges with a superior quality of cement.

Wood joints are also nearly all stationary. They are made partially fluid-tight by "grooving and tenoning," and by "caulking" with oakum or similar material. If the wood is saturated with water, it swells, the edges of the joints press closer together, and the joints become tighter the greater the water-pressure is which tends to produce leakage. Relatively to its weaker general strength, wood is a better material than iron so far as regards the transmission of a thrust past a joint. So soon as a heavy pressure comes on the joint all the small irregularities of the surfaces in contact are crushed up, and there results an approximately uniform distribution of the pressure over the whole area (i.e. if there be no bending forces), so that no part of the material is unduly stressed. To attain this result the abutting surfaces should be well fitted together, and the bolts binding the pieces together should be arranged so as to ensure that they will not interfere with the timber surfaces coming into this close contact. Owing to its weak shearing strength on sections parallel to the fibre, timber is peculiarly unfitted for tension joints. If the pieces exerting the pull are simply bolted together with wooden or iron bolts, the joint cannot be trusted to transmit any considerable force with safety. The stresses become intensely localized in the immediate neighborhood of the bolts. A tolerably strong timber tension-joint can, however, be made by making the two pieces abut, and connecting them by means of iron plates covering the joint and bolted to the sides of the timbers by bolts passing through the wood. These plates should have their surfaces which lie against the wood ribbed in a direction transverse to the pull. The bolts should fit their holes slackly, and should be well tightened up so as to make the ribs sink into the surface of the timber. There will then be very little localized shearing stress brought upon the interior portions of the wood.

Iron and the other commonly used metals possess in variously high degrees the qualities desirable in substances out of which joints are to be made. The joint ends of metal pieces can easily be fashioned to any advantageous form and size without waste of material. Also these metals offer peculiar facilities for the cutting of their surfaces at a comparatively small cost so smoothly and evenly as to ensure the close contact over their whole areas of surfaces placed against each other. This is of the highest importance, especially in joints designed to transmit force. Wrought iron and mild steel are above all other metals suitable for tension joints where there is not continuous rapid motion. Where such motion occurs, a layer, or, as it is technically termed, a "bush," of brass is inserted underneath the iron. The joint then possesses the high strength of a wrought-iron one and at the same time the good frictional qualities of a brass surface. Leakage past moving metal joints can be prevented by cutting the surfaces very accurately to fit each other. Steam-engine slide-valves and their seats, and piston "packing-rings" and the cylinders they work to and fro in, may be cited as examples. A subsidiary compressible "packing" is in other situations employed, an instance of which may be seen in the "stuffing boxes" which prevent the escape of steam from steam-engine cylinders through the piston-rod hole in the cylinder cover. Fixed metal joints are made fluid tight--(a) by caulking a riveted joint, i.e. by hammering in the edge of the metal with a square-edged chisel (the tighter the joint requires to be against leakage the closer must be the spacing of the rivets--compare the rivet-spacing in bridge, ship and boiler-plate joints); (b) by the insertion between the surfaces of a layer of one or other of various kinds of cement, the layer being thick or thin according to circumstances; (c) by the insertion of a layer of soft solid substance called "packing" or "insertion."

Apart from cemented and glued joints, most joints are formed by cutting one or more holes in the ends of the pieces to be joined, and inserting in these holes a corresponding number of pins. The word "pin" is technically restricted to mean a cylindrical pin in a movable joint. The word "bolt" is used when the cylindrical pin is screwed up tight with a nut so as to be immovable. When the pin is not screwed, but is fastened by being beaten down on either end, it is called a "rivet." The pin is sometimes rectangular in section, and tapered or parallel lengthwise. "Gibs" and "cottars" are examples of the latter. It is very rarely the case that fixed joints have their pins subject to simple compression in the direction of their length, though they are frequently subject to simple tension in that direction. A good example is the joint between a steam cylinder and its cover, where the bolts have to resist the whole thrust of the steam, and at the same time to keep the joint steam-tight.

JOINTS, in geology. All rocks are traversed more or less completely by vertical or highly inclined divisional planes termed _joints_. Soft rocks, indeed, such as loose sand and uncompacted clay, do not show these planes; but even a soft loam after standing for some time, consolidated by its own weight, will usually be found to have acquired them. Joints vary in sharpness of definition, in the regularity of their perpendicular or horizontal course, in their lateral persistence, in number and in the directions of their intersections. As a rule, they are most sharply defined in proportion to the fineness of grain of the rock. They are often quite invisible, being merely planes of potential weakness, until revealed by the slow disintegrating effects of the weather, which induces fracture along their planes in preference to other directions in the rock; it is along the same planes that a rock breaks most readily under the blow of a hammer. In coarse-textured rocks, on the other hand, joints are apt to show themselves as irregular rents along which the rock has been shattered, so that they present an uneven sinuous course, branching off in different directions. In many rocks they descend vertically at not very unequal distances, so that the spaces between them are marked off into so many wall-like masses. But this symmetry often gives place to a more or less tortuous course with lateral joints in various apparently random directions, more especially where in stratified rocks the beds have diverse lithological characters. A single joint may be traced sometimes for many yards or even for several miles, more particularly when the rock is fine-grained and fairly rigid, as in limestone. Where the texture is coarse and unequal, the joints, though abundant, run into each other in such a way that no one in particular can be identified for so great a distance. The number of joints in a mass of rock varies within wide limits. Among rocks which have undergone little disturbance the joints may be separated from each other by intervals of several yards. In other cases where the terrestrial movement appears to have been considerable, the rocks are so jointed as to have acquired therefrom a fissile character that has almost obliterated their tendency to split along the lines of bedding.

_The Cause of Jointing in Rocks._--The continual state of movement in
the crust of the earth is the primary cause of the majority of joints.
It is to the outermost layers of the lithosphere that joints are
confined; in what van Hise has described as the "zone of fracture,"
which he estimates may extend to a depth of 12,000 metres in the case
of rigid rocks. Below the zone of fracture, joints cannot be formed,
for there the rocks tend to flow rather than break. The rocky crust,
as it slowly accommodates itself to the shrinking interior of the
earth, is subjected unceasingly to stresses which induce jointing by
tension, compression and torsion. Thus joints are produced during the
slow cyclical movements of elevation and depression as well as by the
more vigorous movements of earthquakes. Tension-joints are the most
widely spread; they are naturally most numerous over areas of
upheaval. Compression-joints are generally associated with the more
intense movements which have involved shearing, minor-faulting and
slaty cleavage. A minor cause of tension-jointing is shrinkage, due
either to cooling or to desiccation. The most striking type of
jointing is that produced by the cooling of igneous rocks, whereby a
regularly columnar structure is developed, often called basaltic
structure, such as is found at the Giant's Causeway. This structure is
described in connexion with modern volcanic rocks, but it is met with
in igneous rocks of all ages. It is as well displayed among the
felsites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and the basalts of
Carboniferous Limestone age as among the Tertiary lavas of Auvergne
and Vivarais. This type of jointing may cause the rock to split up
into roughly hexagonal prisms no thicker than a lead pencil; on the
other hand, in many dolerites and diorites the prisms are much
coarser, having a diameter of 3 ft. or more, and they are more
irregular in form; they may be so long as to extend up the face of a
cliff for 300 or 400 ft. A columnar jointing has often been
superinduced upon stratified rocks by contact with intrusive igneous
masses. Sandstones, shales and coal may be observed in this condition.
The columns diverge perpendicularly from the surface of the injected
altering substance, so that when the latter is vertical, the columns
are horizontal; or when it undulates the columns follow its
curvatures. Beautiful examples of this character occur among the
coal-seams of Ayrshire. Occasionally a prismatic form of jointing may
be observed in unaltered strata; in this case it is usually among
those which have been chemically formed, as in gypsum, where, as
noticed by Jukes in the Paris Basin, some beds are divided from top to
bottom by vertical hexagonal prisms. Desiccation, as shown by the
cracks formed in mud when it dries, has probably been instrumental in
causing jointing in a limited number of cases among stratified rocks.

_Movement along Joint Planes._--In some conglomerates the joints may
be seen traversing the enclosed pebbles as well as the surrounding
matrix; large blocks of hard quartz are cut through by them as sharply
as if they had been sliced by a lapidary's machine. A similar
phenomenon may be observed in flints as they lie embedded in the
chalk, and the same joints may be traced continuously through many
yards of rock. Such facts show that the agency to which the jointing
of rocks was due must have operated with considerable force. Further
indication of movement is supplied by the rubbed and striated surfaces
of some joints. These surfaces, termed _slickensides_, have evidently
been ground against each other.

_Influence of Joints on Water-flow and Scenery._--Joints form natural
paths for the passage downward and upward of subterranean water and
have an important bearing upon water supply. Water obtained directly
from highly jointed rock is more liable to become contaminated by
surface impurities than that from a more compact rock through which it
has had to soak its way; for this reason many limestones are objected
to as sources of potable water. On exposed surfaces joints have great
influence in determining the rate and type of weathering. They furnish
an effective lodgment for surface water, which, frozen by lowering of
temperature, expands into ice and wedges off blocks of the rock; and
the more numerous the joints the more rapidly does the action proceed.
As they serve, in conjunction with bedding, to divide stratified rocks
into large quadrangular blocks, their effect on cliffs and other
exposed places is seen in the splintered and dislocated aspect so
familiar in mountain scenery. Not infrequently, by directing the
initial activity of weathering agents, joints have been responsible
for the course taken by large streams as well as for the type of
scenery on their banks. In limestones, which succumb readily to the
solvent action of water, the joints are liable to be gradually
enlarged along the course of the underground waterflow until caves are
formed of great size and intricacy.

_Infilled Joints._--Joints which have been so enlarged by solution are
sometimes filled again completely or partially by minerals brought
thither in solution by the water traversing the rock; calcite, barytes
and ores of lead and copper may be so deposited. In this way many
valuable mineral veins have been formed. Widened joints may also be
filled in by detritus from the surface, or, in deep-seated portions of
the crust, by heated igneous rock, forced from below along the planes
of least resistance. Occasionally even sedimentary rocks may be forced
up joints from below, as in the case of the so-called "sandstone
dykes."

_Practical Utility of Joints._--An important feature in the joints of
stratified rocks is the direction in which they intersect each other.
As the result of observations we learn that they possess two dominant
trends, one coincident in a general way with the direction in which
the strata are inclined to the horizon, the other running transversely
approximately at right angles. The former set is known as
_dip-joints_, because they run with the _dip_ or inclination of the
rocks, the latter is termed _strike-joints_, inasmuch as they conform
to the general _strike_ or mean outcrop. It is owing to the existence
of this double series of joints that ordinary quarrying operations can
be carried on. Large quadrangular blocks can be wedged off that would
be shattered if exposed to the risk of blasting. A quarry is usually
worked on the dip of the rock, hence strike-joints form clean-cut
faces in front of the workmen as they advance. These are known as
_backs_, and the dip-joints which traverse them as _cutters_. The way
in which this double set of joints occurs in a quarry may be seen in
the figure, where the parallel lines which traverse the shaded and
unshaded faces mark the successive strata. The broad white spaces
running along the length of the quarry behind the seated figure are
strike-joints or backs, traversed by some highly inclined lines which
mark the position of the dip-joints or cutters. The shaded ends
looking towards the spectator are cutters from which the rock has been
quarried away on one side. In crystalline (igneous) rocks, bedding is
absent and very often there is no horizontal jointing to take its
place; the joint planes break up the mass more irregularly than in
stratified rocks. Granite, for example, is usually traversed by two
sets of chief or _master-joints_ cutting each other somewhat
obliquely. Their effect is to divide the rock into long quadrangular,
rhomboidal, or even polygonal columns. But a third set may often be
noticed cutting across the columns, though less continuous and
dominant than the others. When these transverse joints are few in
number, columns many feet in length can be quarried out entire. Such
monoliths have been from early times employed in the construction of
obelisks and pillars. (J. A. H.)

JOINTURE, in law, a provision for a wife after the death of her husband. As defined by Sir E. Coke, it is "a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife, of lands or tenements, to take effect presently in possession or profit after the death of her husband, for the life of the wife at least, if she herself be not the cause of determination or forfeiture of it" (Co. Litt. 36b). A jointure is of two kinds, legal and equitable. A legal jointure was first authorized by the Statute of Uses. Before this statute a husband had no legal seisin in such lands as were vested in another to his "use," but merely an equitable estate. Consequently it was usual to make settlements on marriage, the most general form being the settlement by deed of an estate to the use of the husband and wife for their lives in joint tenancy (or "jointure"), so that the whole would go to the survivor. Although, strictly speaking, a jointure is a joint estate limited to both husband and wife, in common acceptation the word extends also to a sole estate limited to the wife only. The requisites of a legal jointure are: (1) the jointure must take effect immediately after the husband's death; (2) it must be for the wife's life or for a greater estate, or be determinable by her own act; (3) it must be made before marriage--if after, it is voidable at the wife's election, on the death of the husband; (4) it must be expressed to be in satisfaction of dower and not of part of it. In equity, any provision made for a wife before marriage and accepted by her (not being an infant) in lieu of dower was a bar to such. If the provision was made after marriage, the wife was not barred by such provision, though expressly stated to be in lieu of dower; she was put to her election between jointure and dower (see DOWER).

JOINVILLE, the name of a French noble family of Champagne, which traced its descent from Étienne de Vaux, who lived at the beginning of the 11th century. Geoffroi III. (d. 1184), sire de Joinville, who accompanied Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne, to the Holy Land in 1147, received from him the office of seneschal, and this office became hereditary in the house of Joinville. In 1203 Geoffroi V., sire de Joinville, died while on a crusade, leaving no children. He was succeeded by his brother Simon, who married Beatrice of Burgundy, daughter of the count of Auxonne, and had as his son Jean (q.v.), the historian and friend of St Louis. Henri (d. 1374), sire de Joinville, the grandson of Jean, became count of Vaudémont, through his mother, Marguerite de Vaudémont. His daughter, Marguerite de Joinville, married in 1393 Ferry of Lorraine (d. 1415), to whom she brought the lands of Joinville. In 1552, Joinville was made into a principality for the house of Lorraine. Mlle de Montpensier, the heiress of Mlle de Guise, bequeathed the principality of Joinville to Philip, duke of Orleans (1693). The castle, which overhung the Marne, was sold in 1791 to be demolished. The title of prince de Joinville (q.v.) was given later to the third son of King Louis Philippe. Two branches of the house of Joinville have settled in other countries: one in England, descended from Geoffroi de Joinville, sire de Vaucouleurs, and brother of the historian, who served under Henry III. and Edward I.; the other, descended from Geoffroi de Joinville, sire de Briquenay, and son of Jean, settled in the kingdom of Naples.

See J. Simonnet, _Essai sur l'histoire et la généalogie des seigneurs
de Joinville_ (1875); H. F. Delaborde, _Jean de Joinville et les
seigneurs de Joinville_ (1894). (M. P.*)

JOINVILLE, FRANÇOIS FERDINAND PHILIPPE LOUIS MARIE, PRINCE DE (1818-1900), third son of Louis Phllippe, duc d'Orléans, afterwards king of the French, was born at Neuilly on the 14th of August 1818. He was educated for the navy, and became lieutenant in 1836. His first conspicuous service was at the bombardment of San Juan de Ulloa, in November 1838, when he headed a landing party and took the Mexican general Arista prisoner with his own hand at Vera Cruz. He was promoted captain, and in 1840 was entrusted with the charge of bringing the remains of Napoleon from St Helena to France. In 1844 he conducted naval operations on the coast of Morocco, bombarding Tangier and occupying Mogador, and was recompensed with the grade of vice-admiral. In the following year he published in the _Revue des deux mondes_ an article on the deficiencies of the French navy which attracted considerable attention, and by his hostility to the Guizot ministry, as well as by an affectation of ill-will towards Great Britain, he gained considerable popularity. The revolution of 1848 nevertheless swept him away with the other Orleans princes. He hastened to quit Algeria, where he was then serving, and took refuge at Claremont, in Surrey, with the rest of his family. In 1861, upon the breaking out of the American Civil War, he proceeded to Washington, and placed the services of his son and two of his nephews at the disposal of the United States government. Otherwise, he was little heard of until the overthrow of the Empire in 1870, when he re-entered France, only to be promptly expelled by the government of national defence. Returning incognito, he joined the army of General d'Aurelle de Paladines, under the assumed name of Colonel Lutherod, fought bravely before Orleans, and afterwards, divulging his identity, formally sought permission to serve. Gambretta, however, arrested him and sent him back to England. In the National Assembly, elected in February 1871, the prince was returned by two departments and elected to sit for the Haute Marne, but, by an arrangement with Thiers, did not take his seat until the latter had been chosen president of the provincial republic. His deafness prevented him from making any figure in the assembly, and he resigned his seat in 1876. In 1886 the provisions of the law against pretenders to the throne deprived him of his rank as vice-admiral, but he continued to live in France, and died in Paris on the 16th of June 1900. He had married in 1843 the princess Francisca, sister of Pedro II., emperor of Brazil, and had a son, the duc de Penthièvre (born in 1845), also brought up to the navy, and a daughter Françoise (1844- ) who married the duc de Chartres in 1863.

The prince de Joinville was the author of several essays and pamphlets
on naval affairs and other matters of public interest, which were
originally published for the most part either unsigned or
pseudonymously, and subsequently republished under his own name after
the fall of the Empire. They include _Essais sur la marine française_
(1853); _Études sur la marine_ (1859 and 1870); _La Guerre d'Amérique,
campagne du Potomac_ (1862 and 1872); _Encore un mot sur Sadowa_
(Brussels, 1868); and _Vieux souvenirs_ (1894).

JOINVILLE, JEAN, SIRE DE (1224-1319), was the second great writer of history in Old French, and in a manner occupies the interval between Villehardouin and Froissart. Numerous minor chroniclers fill up the gaps, but no one of them has the idiosyncrasy which distinguishes these three writers, who illustrate the three periods of the middle ages--adolescence, complete manhood, and decadence. Joinville was the head of a noble family of the province of Champagne (see JOINVILLE, above). The provincial court of the counts of Champagne had long been a distinguished one, and the action of Thibaut the poet, together with the proximity of the district to Paris, made the province less rebellious than most of the great feudal divisions of France to the royal authority. Joinville's first appearance at the king's court was in 1241, on the occasion of the knighting of Louis IX.'s younger brother Alphonse. Seven years afterwards he took the cross, thereby giving St Louis a valuable follower, and supplying himself with the occasion of an eternal memory. The crusade, in which he distinguished himself equally by wisdom and prowess, taught his practical spirit several lessons. He returned with the king in 1254. But, though his reverence for the personal character of his prince seems to have known no bounds, he had probably gauged the strategic faculties of the saintly king, and he certainly had imbibed the spirit of the dictum that a man's first duties are those to his own house. He was in the intervals of residence on his own fief a constant attendant on the court, but he declined to accompany the king on his last and fatal expedition. In 1282 he was one of the witnesses whose testimony was formally given at St Denis in the matter of the canonization of Louis, and in 1298 he was present at the exhumation of the saint's body. It was not till even later that he began his literary work, the occasion being a request from Jeanne of Navarre, the wife of Philippe le Bel and the mother of Louis le Hutin. The great interval between his experiences and the period of the composition of his history is important for the due comprehension of the latter. Some years passed before the task was completed, on its own showing, in October 1309. Jeanne was by this time dead, and Joinville presented his book to her son Louis the Quarreller. This original manuscript is now lost, whereby hangs a tale. Great as was his age, Joinville had not ceased to be actively loyal, and in 1315 he complied with the royal summons to bear arms against the Flemings. He was at Joinville again in 1317, and on the 11th of July 1319 he died at the age of ninety-five, leaving his possessions and his position as seneschal of Champagne to his second son Anselm. He was buried in the neighbouring church of St Laurent, where during the Revolution his bones underwent profanation. Besides his _Histoire de Saint Louis_ and his _Credo_ or "Confession of Faith" written much earlier, a considerable number, relatively speaking, of letters and business documents concerning the fief of Joinville and so forth are extant. These have an importance which we shall consider further on; but Joinville owes his place in general estimation only to his history of his crusading experiences and of the subsequent fate of St Louis.

Of the famous French history books of the middle ages Joinville's bears the most vivid impress of the personal characteristics of its composer. It does not, like Villehardouin, give us a picture of the temper and habits of a whole order or cast of men during a heroic period of human history; it falls far short of Froissart in vivid portraying of the picturesque and external aspects of social life; but it is a more personal book than either. The age and circumstances of the writer must not be forgotten in reading it. He is a very old man telling of circumstances which occurred in his youth. He evidently thinks that the times have not changed for the better--what with the frequency with which the devil is invoked in modern France, and the sinful expenditure common in the matter of embroidered silk coats. But this laudation of times past concentrates itself almost wholly on the person of the sainted king whom, while with feudal independence he had declined to swear fealty to him, "because I was not his man," he evidently regarded with an unlimited reverence. His age, too, while garrulous to a degree, seems to have been free from the slightest taint of boasting. No one perhaps ever took less trouble to make himself out a hero than Joinville. He is constantly admitting that on such and such an occasion he was terribly afraid; he confesses without the least shame that, when one of his followers suggested defiance of the Saracens and voluntary death, he (Joinville) paid not the least attention to him; nor does he attempt to gloss in any way his refusal to accompany St Louis on his unlucky second crusade, or his invincible conviction that it was better to be in mortal sin than to have the leprosy, or his decided preference for wine as little watered as might be, or any other weakness. Yet he was a sincerely religious man, as the curious _Credo_, written at Acre and forming a kind of anticipatory appendix to the history, sufficiently shows. He presents himself as an altogether human person, brave enough in the field, and, at least when young, capable of extravagant devotion to an ideal, provided the ideal was fashionable, but having at bottom a sufficient respect for his own skin and a full consciousness of the side on which his bread is buttered. Nor can he be said to be in all respects an intelligent traveller. There were in him what may be called glimmerings of deliberate literature, but they were hardly more than glimmerings. His famous description of Greek fire has a most provoking mixture of circumstantial detail with absence of verifying particulars. It is as matter-of-fact and comparative as Dante, without a touch of Dante's genius. "The fashion of Greek fire was such that it came to us as great as a tun of verjuice, and the fiery tail of it was as big as a mighty lance; it made such noise in the coming that it seemed like the thunder from heaven, and looked like a dragon flying through the air; so great a light did it throw that throughout the host men saw as though it were day for the light it threw." Certainly the excellent seneschal has not stinted himself of comparisons here, yet they can hardly be said to be luminous. That the thing made a great flame, a great noise, and struck terror into the beholder is about the sum of it all. Every now and then indeed a striking circumstance, strikingly told, occurs in Joinville, such as the famous incident of the woman who carried in one hand a chafing dish of fire, in the other a phial of water, that she might burn heaven and quench hell, lest in future any man should serve God merely for hope of the one or fear of the other. But in these cases the author only repeats what he has heard from others. On his own account he is much more interested in small personal details than in greater things. How the Saracens, when they took him prisoner, he being half dead with a complication of diseases, kindly left him "un mien couverture d'écarlate" which his mother had given him, and which he put over him, having made a hole therein and bound it round him with a cord; how when he came to Acre in a pitiable condition an old servant of his house presented himself, and "brought me clean white hoods and combed my hair most comfortably", how he bought a hundred tuns of wine and served it--the best first, according to high authority--well-watered to his private soldiers, somewhat less watered to the squires, and to the knights neat, but with a suggestive phial of the weaker liquid to mix "si comme ils vouloient"--these are the details in which he seems to take greatest pleasure, and for readers six hundred years after date perhaps they are not the least interesting details.

It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that Joinville's book is exclusively or even mainly a chronicle of small beer. If he is not a Villehardouin or a Carlyle, his battlepieces are vivid and truthful, and he has occasional passages of no small episodic importance, such as that dealing with the Old Man of the Mountain. But, above all, the central figure of his book redeems it from the possibility of the charge of being commonplace or ignoble. To St Louis Joinville is a nobler Boswell; and hero-worshipper, hero, and heroic ideal all have something of the sublime about them. The very pettiness of the details in which the good seneschal indulges as to his own weakness only serves to enhance the sublime unworldliness of the king. Joinville is a better warrior than Louis, but, while the former frankly prays for his own safety, the latter only thinks of his army's when they have escaped from the hands of the aliens. One of the king's knights boasts that ten thousand pieces have been "forcontés" (counted short) to the Saracens; and it is with the utmost trouble that Joinville and the rest can persuade the king that this is a joke, and that the Saracens are much more likely to have got the advantage. He warns Joinville against wine-bibbing, against bad language, against all manner of foibles small and great; and the pupil acknowledges that this physician at any rate had healed himself in these respects. It is true that he is severe towards infidels; and his approval of the knight who, finding a Jew likely to get the better of a theological argument, resorted to the baculine variety of logic, does not meet the views of the 20th century. But Louis was not of the 20th century but of the 13th, and after his kind he certainly deserved Joinville's admiration. Side by side with his indignation at the idea of cheating his Saracen enemies may be mentioned his answer to those who after Taillebourg complained that he had let off Henry III. too easily. "He is my man now, and he was not before," said the king, a most unpractical person certainly, and in some ways a sore saint for France. But it is easy to understand the half-despairing adoration with which a shrewd and somewhat prosaic person like Joinville must have regarded this flower of chivalry born out of due time. He has had his reward, for assuredly the portrait of St Louis, from the early collection of anecdotes to the last hearsay sketch of the woeful end at Tunis, with the famous _enseignement_ which is still the best summary of the theoretical duties of a Christian king in medieval times, is such as to take away all charge of vulgarity or mere _commérage_ from Joinville, a charge to which otherwise he might perhaps have been exposed.

The arrangement of the book is, considering its circumstances and the date of its composition, sufficiently methodical. According to its own account it is divided into three parts--the first dealing generally with the character and conduct of the hero; the second with his acts and deeds in Egypt, Palestine, &c., as Joinville knew them; the third with his subsequent life and death. Of these the last is very brief, the first not long; the middle constitutes the bulk of the work. The contents of the first part are, as might be expected, miscellaneous enough, and consist chiefly of stories chosen to show the valour of Louis, his piety, his justice, his personal temperance, and so forth. The second part enters upon the history of the crusade itself, and tells how Joinville pledged all his land save so much as would bring in a thousand livres a year, and started with a brave retinue of nine knights (two of whom besides himself wore bannerets), and shared a ship with the sire d'Aspremont, leaving Joinville without raising his eyes, "pour ce que le cuer ne me attendrisist du biau chastel que je lessoie et de mes deux enfans"; how they could not get out of sight of a high mountainous island (Lampedusa or Pantellaria) till they had made a procession round the masts in honour of the Virgin; how they reached first Cyprus and then Egypt; how they took Damietta, and then entangled themselves in the Delta. Bad generalship, which is sufficiently obvious, unwholesome food--it was Lent, and they ate the Nile fish which had been feasting on the carcases of the slain--and Greek fire did the rest, and personal valour was of little avail, not merely against superior numbers and better generals, but against dysentery and a certain "mal de l'ost" which attacked the mouth and the legs, a curious human version of a well-known bestial malady. After ransom Acre was the chief scene of Louis's stay in the East, and here Joinville lived in some state, and saw not a few interesting things, hearing besides much gossip as to the inferior affairs of Asia from ambassadors, merchants and others. At last they journeyed back again to France, not without considerable experiences of the perils of the deep, which Joinville tells with a good deal of spirit. The remainder of the book is very brief. Some anecdotes of the king's "justice," his favourite and distinguishing attribute during the sixteen years which intervened between the two crusades, are given; then comes the story of Joinville's own refusal to join the second expedition, a refusal which bluntly alleged the harm done by the king's men who stayed at home to the vassals of those who went abroad as the reason of Joinville's resolution to remain behind. The death of the king at Tunis, his _enseignement_ to his son, and the story of his canonization complete the work.

The book in which this interesting story is told has had a literary
history which less affects its matter than the vicissitudes to which
Froissart has been subjected, but which is hardly less curious in its
way. There is no reason for supposing that Joinville indulged in
various editions, such as those which have given Kervyn de Lettenhove
and Siméon Luce so much trouble, and which make so vast a difference
between the first and the last redaction of the chronicler of the
Hundred Years' War. Indeed the great age of the seneschal of
Champagne, and his intimate first-hand acquaintance with his subject,
made such variations extremely improbable. But, whereas there is no
great difficulty (though much labour) in ascertaining the original and
all subsequent texts of Froissart, the original text of Joinville was
until recently unknown, and even now may be said to be in the state of
a conjectural restoration. It has been said that the book was
presented to Louis le Hutin. Now we have a catalogue of Louis le
Hutin's library, and, strange to say, Joinville does not figure in it.
His book seems to have undergone very much the same fate as that which
befell the originals of the first two volumes of the _Paston Letters_
which Sir John Fenn presented to George the Third. Several royal
library catalogues of the 14th century are known, but in none of these
does the _Histoire de St Louis_ appear. It does appear in that of
Charles V. (1411), but apparently no copy even of this survives. As
everybody knows, however, books could be and were multiplied by the
process of copying tolerably freely, and a copy at first or second
hand which belonged to the fiddler king René of Provence in the 15th
century was used for the first printed edition in 1547. Other editions
were printed from other versions, all evidently posterior to the
original. But in 1741 the well-known medievalist La Curne de St Palaye
found at Lucca a manuscript of the 16th century, evidently
representing an older text than any yet printed. Three years later a
14th-century copy was found at Brussels, and this is the standard
manuscript authority for the text of Joinville. Those who prefer to
rest on MS. authority will probably hold to this text, which appears
in the well-known collection of Michaud and Poujoulat as well as that
of Buchon, and in a careful and useful separate edition by Francisque
Michel. The modern science of critical editing, however, which applies
to medieval texts the principles long recognized in editing the
classics, has discovered in the 16th-century manuscript, and still
more in the original miscellaneous works of Joinville, the letters,
deeds, &c., already alluded to, the materials for what we have already
called a conjectural restoration, which is not without its interest,
though perhaps it is possible for that interest to be exaggerated.

For merely general readers Buchon's or Michaud's editions of Joinville
will amply suffice. Both include translations into modern French,
which, however, are hardly necessary, for the language is very easy.
Natalis de Wailly's editions of 1868 and particularly 1874 are
critical editions, embodying the modern research connected with the
text, the value of which is considerable, but contestable. They are
accompanied by ample annotations and appendices, with illustrations of
great merit and value. Much valuable information appeared for the
first time in the edition of F. Michel (1859). To these may be added
A. F. Didot's _Études sur Joinville_ (1870) and H. F. Delaborde's
_Jean de Joinville_ (1894). A good sketch of the whole subject will be
found in Aubertin's _Histoire de la langue et de la littérature
françaises au moyen âge_, ii. 196-211; see also Gaston Paris, _Litt.
française au moyen âge_ (1893), and A. Debidour, _Les Chroniqueurs_
(1888). There are English translations by T. Johnes (1807), J. Hutton
(1868), Ethel Wedgwood (1906), and (more literally) Sir F. T. Marzials
("Everyman's Library," 1908). (G. Sa.)

JOIST, in building, one of a row or tier of beams set edgewise from one wall or partition to another and carrying the flooring boards on the upper edge and the laths of the ceiling on the lower. In double flooring there are three series of joists, _binding_, _bridging_, and _ceiling_ joists. The binding joists are the real support of the floor, running from wall to wall, and carrying the bridging joists above and the ceiling joists below (see CARPENTRY), The Mid. Eng. form of the word was _giste_ or _gyste_, and was adapted from O. Fr. _giste_, modern _gîte_, a beam supporting the platform of a gun. By origin the word meant that on which anything lies or rests (_gésir_, to lie; Lat. _jacere_).

The English word "gist," in such phrases as "the gist of the matter," the main or central point in an argument, is a doublet of joist. According to Skeat, the origin of this meaning is an O. Fr. proverbial expression, _Je sçay bien où gist le lièvre_, I know well where the hare lies, i.e. I know the real point of the matter.