Hand (anatomy)

“ The Hand is emphatically the organ of touch, not merely because the tips of the fingers, besides being richly endowed with those nerves which confer sensitiveness upon the skin of the whole body, possess in addition an unusual supply of certain minute auxiliary bodies, called “tactile corpuscles,” but because the arrangement of the thumb and fingers, and the motions of the wrist, elbow, and arm, give the hand a power of accommodating itself spontaneously to surfaces, which no other part of the body possesses. ”

“ It must hence be regarded as a primitive form of the member, as a rudimentary, and consequently an imperfect organ.
Transitions from the elementary to other forms of hand are frequently met with. Thus, when the fingers become elongated and somewhat thinner, and the texture of the skin finer, the hand may be said to be intermediate between the elementary and sensitive type, while long, hard, bony fingers indicate an approach towards the motive type. ”

“ The bandages concealing them from view then fell off, and to my agonized sight were disclosed objects that struck me as strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked individuality, I never forget. No two persons’ hands are alike. And in these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue veins, I read a likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall. Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching the throat, the fingers set to work at once to remove the wrappings. ”

“ When in the dark I lay my hand on a surface, or grasp a ball of three inches diameter, in either case the same parts of the hand receive the impression: but out of the different contraction of the hand in the two cases my Understanding constructs the form of the body whose contact caused the feeling, and confirms its construction by leading me to move my hand over the body. If one born blind handles a cubical body, the sensations of his hand are quite uniform on all sides and in all directions,—only the corners press upon a smaller part of his skin. ”

“ At first--a finger only, then a hand, then a nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without consistency.
'Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires, and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. ”

“ The man howls and breaks his lantern with a kick. My hand is partly in the man’s hand, but by a great miracle of the ebbing life in my wrist, my hand, at the moment it leaves my arm, has seized the hand of the man! ”

“ When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder; but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. ”

“ THE HAND AND THE FOOT (p. 2l) .—Man Compared with the Ape.— The peculiar prehensible power possessed by the hand of man is chiefly dependent upon the size and power of the thumb, which is more developed in him than it is in the highest apes. The thumb of the human hand can be brought into exact opposition to the extremities of all the fingers, whether singly or in combination; while in those quadrumana which most nearly approach man, the thumb is so short, and the fingers so much elongated, that their tips can scarcely be brought into opposition ”

“ Each finger has three bones, while the thumb has only two. The first bone of the thumb, standing apart from the rest, enjoys a special freedom of motion, and adds greatly to the usefulness of the hand. ”

“ In desperate excitement I began to work the cord between my wrists up and up between my palms until I could just reach it with my little finger, and by a supreme effort slipped it over my left hand. Great God, I was free! I could now move my hands, although they were still tightly tied together round the wrists. In frantic despair I began to tug and tear at the cords which bound them. ”

“ The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance, which for want of another term we style will. The eye can discover the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features can be compared to the richness of its expression. ”

“ An infinite number of movements proceed from these various seats.
We have now reached the semeiotic standpoint, that of these very clear plans, the very starting point of gesture.
The articular centres of the arms are called thermometers: the wrist, that of the organic physical life; the shoulder, that of the sensitive life; and the elbow, that of the relative life.
The thumb has much expression; drawn backward it is a symbol of death, drawn forward it is the sign of life. Where there is abundance of life, the thumb stands out from the hand. ”

“ When I now raise my arm up above my head, I am able to do so because some of the flesh of which my arm is composed, is changed into another kind of substance, the moving power being set free during the change. When I feel this hard stone which I take up in my hand, I am able to do so because some of the substance of which my body is made, is changed into another kind of material at the instant that I feel. ”

“ Every time we want to take off a pain, or calm an excitation, we will succeed by presenting the palm of the right hand to the diseased part, if that part is on the left side or the back of the body, or by presenting the palm of the left hand, if it is on the right side or the forepart of the body. ”

“ Now place your finger on the table, and your watch by the side of your hand, and tell your finger to beat 60 times in the minute, or 100 times, or 150 times, or 200 times, and the finger will obey you—because it is moved by muscles which are subject to the will, while the heart is composed of muscles which are not subject to the will. Why should this be? Why should man have the power to regulate his finger, and not to regulate his heart?
For the sustentation of our bodies it is needful that the blood should ever be in circulation. ”

“ The left hand secretes the object in its palm, while the fingers are allowed to fall loosely down, appearing to retain nothing under them. At the very same moment the right hand must be closed, and remain in shape as if containing the object, with the second joints of the fingers pointed toward the spectators, and the back of the hand toward the ground. ”

“ Hands are often present: I have seen a case in which the position of a spirit hand would have necessitated a many-jointed arm about four feet long; but perhaps spirit arms are like this. One spirit extra I have seen has two hands, but both appear to be left hands—evidently a left-handed spirit. ”

“ The slender, tapering fingers, with their pliant joints, together with the strong opposable thumb, enable the hand to mold itself upon and grasp a great variety of objects; so that great as are the delicacy and grace of the hand, it is not wanting in the elements of power. ”

“ The whole hand is brought, by the motion of the arm, to touch one part of the face or body; it is then moved, so as to touch another part, and, with the frequent succession of the simple feelings of touch, in these parts, is associated the feeling of the intervening length, derived from the sensations that accompanied the progressive contraction of the arm. ”

“ What a wonderful instrument is the hand! It has no doubt contributed much towards the evolution of man. The thumb meeting each finger separately, or all four of them combined, enables one to take hold of things. ”

“ Above the mean size, fingers with prominent joints, of an average length, and strong, thick, and bony, with a square tip; palm of a mean size, hollow, and tolerably firm; thumb large, with the muscular root strongly developed. This form of hand cannot exist without a strong, massive developement of the bony and muscular system. It is essentially the hand of man, as the sensitive is that of woman. ”

“ The hand and foot are usually the only lost parts very distinctly felt, the intervening tracts seeming to disappear. A man, for example, whose arm was cut off at the shoulder-joint told me that he felt his hand budding immediately from his shoulder. ”

“ A curious form of pain, as of a bar thrust diagonally through the hand, has been complained of; again, the arm, hand, or fingers may be the seat of a subjective sensation of weight, so that one arm will feel very much heavier than its fellow, or the hand may feel as heavy as lead. ”

“ At the extremity of the hands are five fingers, four of which are in a row, and some long and some short, so that when they take hold of anything, they may come equally together in the palm of the hand. The thumb, which is opposite to the four fingers, is shorter than any of them and stronger, that it may be a help to the whole and render them capable of retaining and grasping. ”

“ So you, who are untrained of touch, do not recognize a hand by the grasp; and so, too, any description I might give would fail to make you acquainted with a friendly hand which my fingers have often folded about, and which my affection translates to my memory. I cannot describe hands under any class or type; there is no democracy of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. ”

“ The upper limbs, now relieved from having any share in the locomotion of the body, assumed great freedom in the various movements of flexion, pronation, and supination. The fingers became longer and could be opposed, singly or in groups, to the thumb so as to form a hook, a clasp or a pair of pincers; and the palm of the hand could be made into a cup-shaped hollow capable of grasping a sphere. In fact, the hand of man is the most perfect piece of mechanism Nature has yet produced. ”

“ By grasping a metallic rod firmly in the hand while the other end of it rests in the relaxed hand of an impressible person, you may transmit a current of nervaura, which he will recognize gradually entering his arm at the hand, passing slowly up to the shoulder, and then diffusing itself over the body. ”

“ Similarly, whoever considers his hand, with its five fingers of unequal lengths, four of them with three joints and the thumb with only two, and the way in which it can be used for grasping, or for carrying, or for smiting, will frankly acknowledge that no amount of human wisdom could better it by altering the number and arrangement of the fingers, or in any other way. ”

“ Whoever studies the hand psychologically gains in the course of time a great deal of faith in what the hand tells him. And finally he doubts it only when chirognomy conflicts with physiognomy. If in such cases it is observed that the hand is more likely to be correct than the face, and that inferences from the hand more rarely show themselves to be false, one is reminded of the dictum of Aristotle, “The hand is the organ of organs, the instrument of instruments in the human body.” ”

“ The heart being grasped in the hand, is felt to become harder during its action. Now this hardness proceeds from tension, precisely as when the forearm is grasped, its tendons are perceived to become tense and resilient when the fingers are moved. ”

“ It is not always a mere form, but sometimes appears perfectly life-like and graceful, the fingers moving, and the flesh apparently as human as that of any in the room. At the wrist, or arm, it becomes hazy, and fades off into a luminous cloud. ”

“ I have the power to move my arm—by my will to make potential manifestations through this arm. If, however, by any means, you break any of the links out of the chain which unites the divine in me, through my spirit, with the matter of my arm—abstract the electricity, the magnetism, or nerve-force—I lose all power over my arm. Bisect the motor-nerve, which connects my arm with my brain, and my arm will hang lifeless by my side. ”

“ I had many times experimented on the human hand, and the philosophical fact had long been demonstrated, to my own satisfaction, that the inside of the hand is totally different from the outside. If we desire to ascertain the temperature of any object, we instinctively touch it with the inside of the fingers ”

“ A nineteen-year-old girl and a man in the forties, who had each but one normal hand, the other, instead of fingers, having only little prominences of skin without bones or muscles, thought they bent their absent fingers when they bent the deformed stump. Tickling these eminences, or binding a string about the fore-arm, caused the same sensations as in amputated persons, and a pressure on the ulnar nerve made the outer fingers tingle. ”

“ The skin and muscles have also been removed from the right limbs; the internal rudiments of the five fingers of the hand, and five toes of the foot, are clearly seen within the fin-shaped plate, and also the strong network of nerves that goes from the spinal cord to the extremities. ”

“ This advantage, when added to those derived from the flexibility of the fingers, suffices to render this part the most perfect organ to give us the exact and precise ideas of the form of bodies, and, if the hand had twenty fingers, it is not to be doubted but that the sense of feeling would be infinitely more perfect ”

“ A hand rather below the average size, and of which the skin is soft and delicate, the fingers long, and provided with numerous cuticular ridges, which are indicative of a large number of the sentient papillæ of touch, the bony portion but slightly developed, and the joints not prominent, is admirably adapted for an organ of sensation, but by no means suited for an instrument of motion ”