The origin of right-handedness / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The origin of right-handedness / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    rReorinted from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. clvii, No. 18, pp. 597-601, Oct. 31, 1907.] THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS. BT GBOBGE M. GOtTLD, M.D. Deprived for a time of the use of his right hand, Carlyle was struck both by the vast importance and the mystery of right-handedness. He forth- with pronounced the question of its origin as one “ not to be settled and not worth asking except as a kind of a riddle.” He was more cor- rect in saying that right-handedness is “ the very oldest human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation whatsoever; no human cosmos possible to be ever begun without it.” Since the entry in Carlyle’s diary was made hun- dreds have despaired or failed in the same manner to see any possible solution of the “ riddle,” and all the time, to an extent which Carlyle could never have dreamed, the extension of the influ- ence of right-handedness has penetrated more profoundly and dominatingly into all the depart- ments of practical, commercial, manufacturing and social life. There is no medical science or prac- tice which can ignore it; the lawmust take constant cognizance of it; mechanics and tool-making are dominated by it; in every evolution or drill of ships or soldiers it is obeyed and kept in mind; and to railroads it dictates wrecks and millions of dollars of expense or savings. It makes or mars the calling, or failure, the success, happiness, or suffering of far more persons than is usually suspected, and scarcely one of us is unaffected in some way for good or ill by our dextral or sinistral complications, co-ordinations and inco-ordina-