Wi 
 
 iliii 
 
Righthandedness and 
 Lefthandedness 
 
 WITH 
 
 CHAPTERS TREATING OF THE WRITING 
 POSTURE, THE RULE OF THE ROAD, ETC. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE M. GOULD, M.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA c^ LONDON 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 1908 
 
Gq 
 
 coptkight, 1908 
 Bt George M. Gould 
 
 Published May, 1908 
 
 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company 
 The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction ''' 
 
 I. The Origin of Righthandedness 21 
 
 II. Why is a Particular Child Righthanded or 
 
 Lefthanded ? 45 
 
 III. The Rule of the Road 61 
 
 IV. Study of a Case of Two-handed Synchronous 
 
 Writing 93 
 
 V. Visual Function the Cause of Slanted Hand- 
 writing ; its Relation to School Hygiene, 
 School Desks, Malposture, Spinal Curvature, 
 and Myopia 146 
 
 VI. The Pathologic Results of Righteyedness 
 
 and Lefteyedness 182 
 
 VII. A Patient's Struggle for Right-eye Function 195 
 
 VIII. The Nomenclature of Dextral, Sinistral, and 
 
 Attentional Organs and Functions 200 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FIG. PAGE 
 
 1. The Hand in the Writing Posture as Usually 
 
 Ordered, but Not Practiced 150 
 
 2. A Common but Incorrect Method op Writing. . . 154 
 
 3. Medieval Copyist Writing with the Paper at 
 
 A Sharp Angle 155 
 
 4. The Usual Writing Posture. . . 156 
 
 5. A Malposture Pictured and Described but 
 
 Never Practiced 158 
 
 6. Another Form of Malposture 158 
 
 7. View of the Writing - field as Seen by the 
 
 Writer, with Skewed Paper, and Body and 
 Head Turned to the Left 158 
 
 8. The Writer Bending Forward, with the Eyes 
 
 Directly Over the Writing 158 
 
 9. Holding the Pen Between the First and Sec- 
 
 ond Fingers, thus Lessening the Need of 
 Bending Head or Body 158 
 
 10. The Hand Held in a Strained and Unnatural 
 
 Position, to Secure a Better View of the 
 Writing 158 
 
 11. The Normal or Hygienic Posture of the Body 
 
 AND Head while Writing 160 
 
 12. A Hygienically Perfect Position 161 
 
 13. Oriental Method of Holding the Writing - 
 
 brush 164 
 
 14. A Lefthanded Malposture 172 
 
 15. Specimen of the Writing of the Declaration 
 
 of Independence 174 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The theories that have been advanced as to ' 
 the origin of righthandedness and lefthanded- 
 ness are: 
 
 1. A. natural provision. (Sir Charles Bell, 
 and others.) 
 
 2. The left-sided location of the heart. (Re- 
 ferred to by Wilson.) 
 
 3. A greater supply of nerve force to the 
 muscles because of an earlier and greater de- 
 velopment of the brain upon one side. (Pro- 
 fessor Gratiolet.) 
 
 4. Obstruction to the flow of blood in the 
 vena cava, by the pulsation of the aorta, (Dr. 
 Barclay.) 
 
 5. Inspiration produces, mechanically, a su- 
 perior efficacy of the muscles of the right side. 
 (Professor Buchanan.) This theory is based 
 upon the observation of the anatomic peculiari- 
 ties of the liver, lungs, etc., and their supposed 
 influence upon the center of gravity of the 
 body. (So far as pertains to the center of 
 gravity, the theory has been adopted by Dr. 
 Struthers and by Dr. AUis.) 
 
 7 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 6. The center of gravity theory. The influ- 
 ence of the weight of the viscera of the two 
 sides of the body, upon the position of the 
 center of gravity. (Dr. Struthers, accepted by 
 Buchanan, Allis, etc.) 
 
 7. The origin of the subclavian arteries, the 
 left before the right in the lefthanded, with 
 superiority of blood-supply to certain struc- 
 tures. (Professor Hyrtl.) 
 
 8. The development of one cerebral hemi- 
 sphere more than the other. (Wilson.) 
 
 9. The Topsy theory — "just growed." 
 These theories merit little argmnent in re- 
 buttal. No. 3 and No. 8 are essentially the 
 same, and, of course, are mere avoidances of 
 an explanation. No. 2, No. 4, No. 5, No. 6 and 
 No. 7 are not based upon facts, and contain 
 fallacies of observa'feon, rendering them at least 
 of insufficient reach and validity. No. 9 is 
 almost as good as any or all of the rest, and 
 we are left with the frank confession of Dr. 
 Struthers, that the mystery "has baffled satis- 
 factory explanation." 
 
 In a large way and notwithstanding a certain 
 number of exceptions, it is an illuminating 
 truth of biology that "the ontogeny repeats the 
 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ph3dogeny. ' ' We can, therefore, never explain 
 the phases of development through which an 
 organism passes except by knowing the corre- 
 sponding stages of evolution of the line of its 
 ancestral forms. If , therefore, we ever solve the 
 mystery of righthandedness andlefthandedness, 
 it will be by the study of the conditions, habits, 
 necessities, etc., of the ancestral types when 
 righthandedness and lefthandedness arose. The -'' 
 infant of a few months shows no signs of 
 preference in the use of the hands ; it is simply 
 nondextrous, or ambisinistrous. Almost as 
 soon as it exhibits any conscious effort toward 
 skillful use of the hands it usually begins to 
 show signs of righthandedness. Before it walks, 
 before it is one year old, righthandedness is 
 clearly pronounced. Baldwin (Pop. Sci. Mo., 
 Vol. XLIV.) has demonstrated experimentally 
 that it is plainly established as early as the 
 seventh or eighth month. The period in phylo- 
 genous savage life to which this of the infant 
 coiTesponds must, therefore, be that of the 
 earliest phase of humanization. The animals, 
 even the anthropoid apes, do not, so far as I 
 have observed, exhibit it. Vierordt says that 
 parrots grasp food with the left foot, by prefer- 
 
 9 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ence, and that lions strike with the left paw. 
 Livingston is quoted as thinking ''all animals 
 are lefthanded." I suspect this is all error, 
 because, as a rule, it would disadvantage rather 
 than help in the animalian struggle. 
 
 Since any sort of consciousness of the facts 
 has existed the wisdom of righthandedness has 
 been emphatically exhibited: (1) In the word 
 dexterity, which is the prized and honored 
 quality of savage and civilized man; (2) in the 
 secondary meaning of the word sinister — un- 
 lucky, ill-omened, evil; (3) in the persistent 
 training of all lefthanded children, by parents, 
 teachers, etc., to make them like the rest of the 
 righthanded world. These three facts, the 
 residue of the psychologic habits of ages, per- 
 sistent in all history, crystallized and embedded 
 in the very language itself which chronicles all 
 mentality, help to give us the clue to the solu- 
 tion of the riddle. 
 
 Skillfulness, ''handiness," expertness of 
 sense and act, were the sole means whereby the 
 savage could win his place in the world, domes- 
 ticate animals, conquer in all sorts of conflicts, 
 supply himself with food, clothing, house, etc. 
 It was necessary that one hand should be chosen 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 to do the dextrous or more skilled tasks, for the 
 simple reason that exercise develops and per-- 
 fects function, and one would learn to be more 
 skilled and '^ handy" with one hand than with 
 both. The savage required no treatise on logic 
 nor even any conscious reasoning to teach him 
 this primary lesson. His food and life de- 
 pended upon his learning it. 
 
 But that it was an acquirement, that the law 
 and necessity were not exceptionless, that it 
 was due to no absolute fatalism of anatomy or 
 physiology, is evident from the fact that so 
 large a proportion of lefthanded children and 
 adults exist in all races and times. The educa- 
 tion of lefthanded children, whereby their 
 writing center, naturally dextrocerebral, is by 
 forced training and long habit transferred to 
 the left cerebral hemisphere, is another demon- 
 stration that no inherent neurologic or psycho- 
 logic law governs the location of the cerebral 
 center or its peripheral outworking. When the 
 occasions arose in the humanization process, 
 and the demand for the differentiation of 
 cerebral mechanisms was made, the plastic 
 brain on either side could take up the work. 
 
 And pure, or untrained, lefthanded persons are 
 
 11 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 to-day as expert as their rightlianded fellows. 
 All that is needed to explain righthandedness in 
 94 percent of children is some ancestral savage 
 onstom, habit, or necessity, widely prevalent, 
 which inclined to the use of the right hand and 
 eye for one or two exceptionally intellectual 
 tasks. The inheritance of aptitude, the force 
 of custom, and the necessities of the struggle 
 for existence would certainly fix the persistence 
 of the peculiar excellence. 
 
 • We must not forget that the somewhat sud- 
 den and clear preference of righthandedness 
 and lefthandedness of the child of to-day was in 
 the far-away ancestral line spread out over long 
 periods of time. A year or two of the child's 
 life represents thousands of years of slow 
 acquirement and habit. 
 
 Again, it should be remembered that even in 
 our preferences and habits it is only in a few 
 things that one hand, etc., has the greater ex- 
 pertness, accuracy and rapidity. It is often 
 rather a division of functions, a differentia- 
 tion of ability, than a unique one. In the right- 
 handed the left hand does many tasks of as 
 great or greater importance, and with equal 
 or superior skill, as the right. In eating, the 
 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 fork is now more used than the knife ; in gun- 
 ning, the left hand is given the vastly more 
 important, difficult and onerous task; in chop- 
 ping, hoeing, shoveling, picking, lathe-work, 
 railway locomotive engineering and other tasks 
 the left arm and hand often execute the chief 
 and more expert tasks. Especially noteworthy 
 is the playing of the violin, 'cello and bass viol. 
 The "fingering" is done with the left hand, and 
 forms a striking reversal of dextrality, be- 
 cause it is by all odds the function requiring 
 more manipulative skill, accuracy and rapidity. 
 I do not know that the fact itself has ever been 
 observed and stated, but certainly the reason 
 of this strange contradictory practise has 
 hitherto escaped the attention. It is, I think, 
 due to righteyedness. With few and easily ex- 
 plained exceptions righthandedness is a result, 
 or a concomitant, of righteyedness. If the 
 violin, 'cello and viol were fingered with the 
 right hand the learner would be greatly handi- 
 capped by the foreshortening which would exist 
 as his dextral eye glanced along the neck of the 
 instrument straight in front or below this eye. 
 The learner must see his fingers and gain pre- 
 cision in placing them by careful visual esti- 
 
 13 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 mates. But when placed sinistrad the right 
 eye sees the neck of these instruments and the 
 lingers at an angle which permits more accurate 
 observation, estimates of distances, etc., than 
 would be possible if the instrument were 
 fingered with the right hand. In those instru- 
 ments necessarily held in the median line, some 
 wind-instruments, the flageolet, hautboy, etc., 
 the right hand asserts its selective and more 
 difficult task. When the hands are not seen at 
 all, as in tlie flute, fife, etc., the right again has 
 its choice. No pupil with lefthandedness estab- 
 lished can learn piano-playing easily. I know 
 of one who was a great lover of music who 
 failed utterly after long perseverance. 
 
 There are other cautions to be emphasized 
 relating to the acquirement of righthandedness 
 by the savage: Nearly all the actions which 
 we now call righthanded were in primeval times 
 to him unknown. This is especially true of 
 three things. Knives and forks have only been 
 used in eating for a few hundred years. He ate 
 with his fingers, and one may suspect he used 
 the left as much as the right in this way. The 
 Mussulman custom and its reason are, of 
 course, both modern. Secondly, the modern 
 
 14 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 gun and revolver had not been devised. The 
 bow and arrow, the spear, boomerang, club, etc., 
 could be used as well with the left hand by the 
 lefthanded. Thirdly, writing was unknown, or 
 relatively so, and, as we have now learned, that 
 locates the speech center in the cerebral hemi- 
 sphere opposite the writing hand. It is thus 
 evident that righthandedness in the savage, at 
 the time when it began to become habitual, must 
 have been at best only partial, incomplete, and 
 for a very few acts. The lefthanded arrow- 
 chippers, basket- weavers, club-wielders, sewing- 
 women, etc., even if more numerous relatively 
 than in civilized life, would perhaps attract little 
 or at least less attention than now, and would 
 be less discouraged, surely less taught to re- 
 verse the natural inclination. 
 
 In default of systematic banding and military 
 training, also, the lefthanded spearmen, bow- 
 men, swordsmen and clubmen might not have 
 much attention directed to themselves and 
 sometimes might have an advantage over their 
 single and righthanded adversaries, e.g., in tilt- 
 ing. The preference in heraldry for dextral 
 quarterings, etc., is by no means uniform. 
 
 But there was one overlooked factor which 
 
 15 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 was doubtless decisive in setting up the trend 
 toward rightbandedness. Tbis was tbe develop- 
 ment of sign-language synchronously, and even 
 preceding that of spoken language. Tbe in- 
 effaceable relics of this long and arduous period 
 exist in present day language, plainly in many 
 savage tribes and customs, but the most striking 
 proof is displayed in our so-called Roman nu- 
 merals. The fingers of the hand held up, or 
 counted off, were beyond question the begin- 
 nings of arithmetic, the means of barter, the 
 method of stating the fundamental fact of 
 number requisite in all thinking and doing. 
 Military and intertribal dealings, especially 
 made the custom powerful and even sacred. 
 One finger was the origin of our figure one, the 
 second equaling tivo, etc., up to five, or V, which 
 fork was made by the thumb stuck up opposite 
 the first I. When the counting was more than 
 five, the other hand was made to represent the 
 first five, the digits being added up to ten, when 
 two forks were used, or the crossed thumbs, 
 which constituted X., or ten.* The impressive 
 
 * It does not matter with which hand the first numbering, 
 in some cases, was done; the intelligent attention must have 
 been director to the action with the dextral or spear side. 
 Homer and the earliest Greek vases show the right was 
 inl 66pv , the spear side, and kn' aawida the shield side. 
 
 16 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ceremonies of warring and bartering tribes 
 would stamp with distinctive approval the hand 
 used in the sign-language, and henceforth it 
 would become the honored one, the stamping 
 and writing hand, and in time the sword-hand. 
 The right was chosen as the sign and numbering ^ 
 hand because the left was naturally used for 
 the highly important task of guarding the 
 sinistrally-placed heart with the shield. War 
 is the substance of all early history and of the 
 savage sons which preceded all history. Dr. 
 Flint {The Sun, April 17, 1904) says that deaf- 
 mutes may have an aphasia that prevents the 
 use of the right hand in the sign-lang-uage. 
 
 All the progress of evolution of the higher 
 forms of animal life has depended upon eye- 
 sight. Self-motility and intellect are condi- 
 tioned upon ocular function, and civilization is 
 possible only by perfection of ocular function. 
 What no Darwinian has ever seen is that the 
 survival of the fit has been for the greater and 
 controlling part the survival of the ocularly fit, 
 and the exclusion of the unfit has been of the 
 ocularly unfit. The development of visual per- 
 fection has conditioned the genesis and advance 
 of the higher biologic forms at every step. The 
 
 2 17 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 fact is self-evident when one thinks of it, for 
 all action is dominated and permitted by the 
 sight of the external conditions in which move- 
 ment must take place. There is a striking and 
 demonstrating proof of all this in the embry- 
 ology of the eye as contrasted with the general 
 embryology of the hmnan fetus. The forma- 
 tion of the eye is well under way in the second 
 or third week, but the differentiation of the 
 motor muscular tissues is not clear until some 
 four months later. More significant still is the 
 fact that the eye is a part of the brain, — the 
 brain itself comes out to see, the retina being 
 cerebral substance told off to a special periph- 
 eral and extracerebral function and placing. 
 This is so with no other organ of the body, and 
 it not only demonstrates that vision and intel- 
 lect are united in a common work, but that they 
 are united in being, one in origin, one in nature, 
 one in function, one in history. 
 
 That which is the nearest man's soul, the 
 most psychic, the most immaterial of the doings 
 and creatings of his mind, is language. Its 
 organ is single not double, its center of origin 
 and control is monolateral in one side of the 
 brain, and not as in the case of the hands, eyes, 
 
 18 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 etc., bilateral, or located in tlie two sides of the 
 brain. If it is to act with celerity and precision 
 in war, game, art, hunger, or love, it must be as 
 closely contiguous and in as immediate rela- 
 tions to other centers of co-ordinate and inter- 
 dependent function as possible. Thus an act, 
 muscular, emotional, or volitional requiring a 
 number of co-operating centers must, so far as 
 possible, be near and closely connected with the 
 organ issuing the final command. Locate the 
 speech center in the left half-brain and the 
 centers of the more dextral of the bodily func- 
 tions also located there will act more immedi- 
 ately and accurately than if some of the 
 necessary data were furnished by centers in the 
 right half-brain. This is the fundamental con- 
 dition and necessity of righthandedness. But 
 righthandedness originates in righteyedness.)-^ 
 Thus general dextroexpertness comes into be- 
 ing. Vice versa, of course, in the case of the 
 location of the speech and writing center in the 
 right half-brain and the resultant lefthanded- 
 ness and sinistroexpertness. The four-footed 
 vertebrate with his right eye governing dextral 
 function and dextral dangers, furnished the 
 biologic habit of righteyedness to general dex- 
 
 19 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tral function and of lefteyedn'ess to general 
 sinistral function, so that the prehuman organ- 
 ism brought to anthropology the unfinished 
 mechanism which finally developed righthanded- 
 ness (or lefthandedness) in our savage ancestors 
 by means of war, barter and sign-language. 
 
 Eighthandedness and lefthandedness has too 
 long been considered as a riddle, a mystery for 
 dilettante writers, at best as a matter of scien- 
 tific play. But they or their co-ordinated func- 
 tions are the most serious of practical concerns, 
 the source of infinite suffering, of innumerable 
 tragedies and even suicides. Every physician 
 and especially every ophthalmologist, abso- 
 lutely every orthopedist and neurologist must 
 in the future concern himself vitally with the 
 matter. The 20,000,000 patients with lateral 
 curvature of the spine are products of morbid 
 visual function. And they are begotten by the 
 schools so that the pedagog may never rid him- 
 self or herself of an awful duty. In every 
 school room of fifty pupils ten are scoliotics and 
 at least twenty are also suffering from terrible 
 and life-wrecking diseases caused by eyestrain. 
 
 The ''ambidexterity" crank is deserving of 
 a more severe punishment than any other of 
 our many criminally insane. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORIGIISr OP EIGHTHANDEDNESS.* 
 
 ' Deprived for a time of the use of his right 
 hand, Carlyle was struck both by the vast im- 
 portance and the mystery of righthandedness. 
 He forthwith pronounced tlie question of its 
 origin as 'one "not to be settled and not worth 
 asking except as a kind of a riddle. ' ' He was ' 
 more correct in saying that righthandedness is 
 ' ' the very oldest human institution that exists, 
 indispensable to all human co-operation whatso- 
 ever; no human cosmos possible to be ever 
 begun without it." Since the entry in Carlyle 's 
 diary was made hundreds 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 influence of righthanded-^ 
 ness has penetrated more profoundly and 
 dominatingly into all the departments of prac- 
 tical, commercial, manufacturing, and social life. 
 There is no medical science or practice which 
 
 * From the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. clvii, 
 No. 18, pp. 597-601, Oct. 31, 1907. 
 
 21 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 can ignore it; the law mnst take constant cog- 
 nizance 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, hap- 
 piness, 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-ordina- 
 tions and inco-ordinations. There are over three 
 million lefthanded persons in our country, and 
 they are either excluded or handicapped in 
 many occupations. 
 
 But Carlyle's insoluble ''riddle" and the per- 
 plexities of hundreds of writers is now easily 
 cleared up. The origin of righthandedness and 
 lefthandedness is plain, and equally so the 
 history of the puzzle of ' ' the Rule of the Road. ' ' 
 PBarbaric custom and war are the source of 
 , righthandedness; medicine, including cerebral 
 anatomy and physiology, is able to explain the 
 development of general righthandedness upon 
 which rest all the mysteries of the Rule of the 
 Road. 
 
 22 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Beyond question the beginnings of right- 
 liandedness, and of general rightsidedness, date 
 historically to primitive war and barter and the 
 tally-stick. The first differentiation of function 
 in the use of the hands doubtless arose in telling 
 off the left hand and arm to hold the shield 
 which should protect the heart side of the body 
 from the adversary's blows. This hand thus 
 became known as the shield hand. Except in a 
 few very modern tasks the fact has dictated that 
 the left hand has been generally the holding 
 hand, chosen instinctively for the more passive 
 or holding tasks, those requiring the less deli- 
 cate or expert proficiency. Custom and lan- 
 guage have long crystallized into an acceptance 
 of the usage and even gone so far as to call the 
 unlucky and misfortunate and awkward by the 
 words left, sinister, sinistral, gauche, etc. Con- 
 versely, the right hand was chosen for the 
 positive fighting task, and called the spear hand, 
 and some of the most prized virtues, dexterity, 
 dextrousness, etc., were named after the culti- 
 vated abilities of the right hand. The oldest 
 Greek vases, and Homer, even the cave-men, 
 demonstrate the existence of the distinctions of 
 shield hand, spear hand, and of righthanded- 
 
 23 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ness generally. In Xenoplion's '^ Anabasis" 
 the usages had become the routine of all mili- 
 tary drill and discipline. In Smith's ''Diction- 
 ary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" under 
 the caption ' ' Exercitus, ' ' may be found illustra- 
 tions of the distinction emphasized. For 
 instance : 
 
 "The facing to the right was always the usage, because 
 if the evolution were performed in the face of an enemy, 
 the shielded side could be presented toward him. . . . 
 Similar maneuvers took place if the enemy appeared on the 
 left, though, as this was the shielded side of the soldiers, 
 and the danger was consequently less, it was frequently 
 thought sufficient to keep the enemy in check by means of 
 the cavalry and light troops. One point that a general had 
 to be on his guard against was the tendency of an enemy, 
 when advancing im fdUayyo?^ to sheer off towards the 
 right, each man pressing closer to his right-hand neighbor 
 in order to protect his unshielded side, so that the right 
 wing frequently got beyond the left wing of the enemy." 
 
 ■ The Roman army exercitus fixed the working 
 of righthand and lefthand orders down to the 
 most minute details, and at West Point to-day 
 the thousand peculiarities of military drill and 
 custom and command are exemplifications of 
 the consequences of shield-hand and spear-hand. 
 
 24 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Xenoplion is still in command of every army in 
 the world. Within the memory of living men 
 companies of American militia often had, at the 
 end, tail, or left of the battalion, a lefthanded 
 soldier, placed there in order that his musket, 
 carried in his l^ft instead of his right hand, 
 might not clash with the right hand and its held 
 gun of his next, righthanded, fellow. 
 
 In the word digit, and in the Roman nu- 
 merals, and in the five strokes or cuts of the 
 tally- stick, we have the most abundant and abid- 
 ing testimony as to the origin of righthanded- 
 ness and the location of the speech center, 
 in the left half -brain. Counting, writing and 
 speaking are single functions united into act 
 by the volition, the seal and ratification of will- 
 ing. By all savages for all time, in bargaining, 
 the right hand has been held aloft, and one, 
 two, three, or four fingers shown and flung at 
 the opposed bargainer. The gesture is always 
 that of throwing the fingers or numbers at him. 
 The whole hand is flung more energetically, 
 when five is intended, i.e., the letter V of the 
 fork of the thumb and first digit. The scratches 
 on the tally-stick tell the same story and the 
 diagonal thumb line, denoting five, run across 
 
 25 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 four digits from upper left to lower right hand 
 corner, indicates the thumb or fifth number. 
 And so on, to ten or X, the crossed or doubled 
 thumbs and to all other numbers. A close study 
 of the Chinese and Japanese numerals con- 
 vinces that the Roman system described, ancient 
 as it is, is but a late offshoot of far older 
 
 r 
 
 oriental usage, in general features the same the 
 world over, and ages before history began. 
 
 The significance of these illustrations of 
 primitive and persisting sign-language, gesture- 
 language and counting-language is that as they 
 are executed by the right fingers and right 
 hand, the motions of these fingers and this hand 
 are instituted and innervated by "a center" 
 or collection of brain cells in a certain sj)ot 
 (called Broca's convolution) placed in the left 
 side of the brain. With one finger held ujd, or 
 more, or the whole hand, with one or more cuts 
 in the tally-stick made, there was (and as the 
 schoolboy's lip-motion in learning to read dem- 
 onstrates) the spoken word, one, two, three, etc. 
 Speech is almost the sole and surely the chief 
 muscular function that is single, not double, 
 and which must be executed from a single in- 
 itiating center of power and control. It is the 
 
 26 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 fusion of all bilateralism, of all bodily and 
 mental components and diversities into the 
 unitized resolve which the whole body, mind and 
 future, must obey. * For the righthanded man 
 this center of nervous origin and control is not 
 in the right half-brain, nor in both half -brains, 
 but only in the left. There also are the nervous 
 or ganglionic mechanisms of memory, of writ- 
 ing, of the expert vision, of hearing, of leg-and- 
 foot motion, which may be or are necessarily 
 bound up with the righthand deeds, the laryn- 
 geal and vocal acts issuing in language, or 
 resolve, or social determination.! The two 
 halves of the brain are remarkably independent 
 and separated from each other, as a thousand 
 facts of physiology, disease and injuiy to brain- 
 substance show. Therefore an injury to the 
 speech or writing centers or to the centers of 
 motion of the righthand fingers of a right- 
 handed person at once paralyzes or destroys, 
 partly or wholly, the power of speech, of writ- 
 ing, of memory, the significance of words, etc. 
 A similar injury to or disease of the corre- 
 sponding parts of the right-brain has no effect 
 whatever upon these functions and acts. The 
 child is born with no discoverable differences 
 
 27 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 of cerebral structure or substance of the two 
 cerebral hemispheres, and none ever appears 
 thereafter. But about the sixth month of life 
 the babe, which will naturally become a right- 
 handed one, begins to put forth the right hand 
 instead of the left to grasp an object, and the 
 cerebral matter about the left third frontal con- 
 volution, however unchanged or like that on the 
 right side, is thenceforth increasingij^ and ex- 
 clusively used to control the organs of speech, 
 of writing and of memory. Just here comes 
 into view the overlooked fact that the degree 
 of righthandedness, of general dextroexpert- 
 ness and even of vocal and mnemonic function 
 is different in different persons, and also that 
 it is all a question of growth and progressive 
 development. In the grunting savage or peas- 
 ant the speech center, although located in the 
 left-brain, must be tremendously more simple 
 than in a musician who knows by heart and 
 sings and plays a thousand pieces of music, who 
 speaks and writes a dozen languages, etc. The 
 differentiation and complication of the cerebral 
 mechanism whence spring all the acts begins in 
 infancy with simple homogeneity, and grows in 
 complexity with every year of added life. With 
 
 28 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 each added year of differentiation the expert- 
 ness grows, and it grows because the single 
 cerebral mechanism has become more and more 
 
 \ 
 
 complex. Therefore with each added year the 
 impossibility of educating the corresponding 
 centers in the right-brain becomes greater. The 
 ambidextery sillies must therefore begin with 
 infants if they are to succeed in making a 
 dextral child of one naturally sinistral. More- 
 over, historically, the trend in all human beings 
 is for them to become more and more exclusively 
 and despotically either righthanded or left- 
 handed, so that with each added generation the 
 impossibilitv of ambidexteritv will increase. 
 Even now the attempt to reverse the law as 
 existing in school children is both useless, ex- 
 pensive of life and in reality impossible. No 
 attempt can wholly succeed; none should, and 
 the partial successes produce cripples and awk- 
 wards, if not disease and tragedy. The most 
 foolish, impertinent, ignorant, expensive, re- 
 sultless and maiming fad is that of the ambi- 
 dexterity mongers. They do not know what 
 they want, do not know that they cannot suc- 
 ceed, do not know that they curse the victim of 
 any partial success. In infancy the lefthanded 
 
 29 
 
EIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 child may be trained to be a riglithanded one, 
 but never to be an ambidextrous one. Why 
 should a violinist bow equally well with both 
 hands, and finger equally well with both hands ? 
 "Why should he write equally expertly with each 
 hand? 
 
 The fatuity becomes amazing with the recog- 
 nition of the fact that righthandedness is nec- 
 essarily bound up with righteyedness, with 
 rightearedness, with rightfootedness. To train 
 the child to be ambidextrous, eyes, ears and 
 feet, — all must be trained to equal expertness 
 in all tasks, and this is ludicrously impossible. 
 We are usually as righteyed as we are right- 
 handed, as any one can prove by looking at the 
 image of the finger or a pencil held upright a 
 foot before the eyes. Alternate opening and 
 closing of each eye demonstrates (with some 
 exceptions understood by oculists) that the 
 right eye is unconsciously the one chosen to 
 ''fix" the image. 
 
 The reason for this general choice of the 
 arm and hand, of eye, of ear, and of leg and foot 
 for conjoined expert tasks is easily recognized. 
 It insures a speedier and more accurate sjTithe- 
 sis of the cerebral functions which must be 
 
 30 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 co-ordinated into a single act and result. The 
 independence of the two halves of the brain 
 makes it necessary that the bodily organs most 
 commonly acting together and most interde- 
 pendent should be incited and controlled by the 
 cerebral centers in close contiguity and in one 
 side of the brain. There is a measurable slow- 
 ness of nerve-current transmission (between 
 100 and 200 feet per second), and even if the 
 connecting links ('' commissural fibers") be- 
 tween the two brain-halves were much more 
 intimate and numerous and short than they 
 are, rapidity and accuracy of correlation and 
 unification in willed act would be impaired, and 
 the safety and decision of the entire organism 
 imperiled, if one or two of the coacting centers 
 were in opposite hemispheres. That in the 
 righthanded all these centers of origination 
 and control are in the left, and in the lefthanded 
 in the right half-brain, is an inevitable conse- 
 quence of the location of the speech center and 
 writing center exclusively in one or the other. 
 Writing and speaking are closely interde- 
 pendent, both in origin (gesture, sign-language, 
 counting, Roman-numeral or digit- throwing) , 
 and in all subsequent history and evolution. 
 
 31 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Their centers of origin and control must there- 
 fore be in close neighborhood and intunate 
 union. Vision which preceded and accompanies 
 all must therefore be in the same side of the 
 brain. This, of course, holds as to hearing and, 
 although less differentiated, to the associated 
 leg and foot movements. 
 
 An astonishing and interesting consequence 
 of all this almost draws itself. It becomes 
 plain that, in the righthanded, intellectual life 
 and progress are by means of the mechanisms 
 of the left cerebral hemisphere. There is no 
 intellect as we understand it except through 
 speech, vocal and written, and the instruments 
 of this function exist only in the left-brain of 
 the righthanded, and in the right-brain of the 
 lefthanded. Mentality of the dextral therefore 
 lives preponderatingly in and through the left 
 half-brain. The fact strongly emphasizes and 
 capitally illustrates the great biologic law that 
 all progress consists in differentiation of func- 
 tion. In the evolution of civilization each bit 
 of cortical brain substance is being told off to a 
 certain peculiar office. That large parts are 
 still without particular and discoverable duties 
 argues plainly for the great progress and dif- 
 
 32 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ferentiation of function in tlie future of hu- 
 manity's advance. The areas of the more 
 unused half -brain (the right in the righthanded, 
 the left in the lefthanded) occupied by the 
 speech and writing centers in the more active 
 half, show microscopically no failure or weak- 
 ness of part or mechanism. If they did 
 heredity would long since have eliminated the 
 lefthanded, and the right half-brain would 
 become changed and atrophied except in those 
 parts originating the muscular activity of the 
 right side of the body, etc. Possibly, the recur- 
 rence itself of the two or more percent of left- 
 handed persons prevents the atrophic tendency 
 in the righthanded. Lefthandedness is there- 
 fore probably not decreasing (probably increas- 
 ing), and the forming organisms of the infant 
 may become lefthanded, etc., with no want of 
 perfection in any part. The emergency finds 
 the inherited mechanism ready for its task. 
 
 In this light and by reason of these facts 
 one sees that materialism is absolutely disal- 
 lowed. The speech and writing mechanisms 
 of the brain do not as such exist, even func- 
 tionally, in the fetus or newborn child. They 
 are creations, slow creations, during childhood 
 
 3 33 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 and youth. At any time they are instruments 
 and mechanisms, expertly manufactured by 
 something not themselves, used as a piano-key 
 and string, and as all the keys and strings, as 
 the piano itself, by something that plays upon 
 them just as a pianist plays upon his instru- 
 ment. That the instrument can or does make 
 itself, that the player and piano are indis- 
 tinguishable and of one substance, are the most 
 unwarranted of pseudophilosophic assump- 
 tions. Far better than either philosophy or 
 religion, physiology thus demonstrates the 
 existence of the life and spirit of man, apart 
 from the material of his body and its mech- 
 anisms. 
 
 There is much obscurity and misconception 
 as to what really is the nature and fact of right- 
 handedness, righteyedness, etc. The crudest 
 blunders, for instance, exist even in learned 
 monographs as to rightfootedness. In dressing, 
 a dextral man begins by first putting his left 
 foot in the left trousers-leg; he places his left 
 foot upon the spade or shovel; he jumps from 
 the right foot ; kicks with the left ; the boxer and 
 prizefighter places the left foot and arm for- 
 ward; the rider vaults a horse from the "near" 
 
 34 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 side, and with the left foot in the stirrui3 first ; * 
 the entered apprentice mason ''steps off with 
 the left foot first;" all soldiers, since time 
 began, start the march by first advancing the 
 left foot. All of these things are conclusive 
 proofs of rightfootedness, and not of leftfooted- 
 ness, as m^y claim. The right foot and leg 
 are unconsciously chosen as the strongest, the 
 most steady, best co-ordinated, most expert ones, 
 with which the spring, the determining or force- 
 giving factor, is made. It is of course nonsense 
 that animals are rightfooted or leftfooted. The 
 differentiation could only arise with sign-lan- 
 guage and counting, and animals do not make 
 gestures or count. No doubt that rightfooted- 
 ness in man is not so far advanced as right- 
 eyedness and righthandedness ; there are more 
 exceptions, less differentiation of function, etc., 
 but it is essentially jDresent, and in process of 
 evolution. 
 Eighteyedness is also subject to more excep- 
 
 * In the Art of Horsemanship Xenoplioa gives the most 
 detailed instruction as to the method of mounting the horse, 
 after which he says, " I think it good that the horseman 
 should practice springing up from the off-side as well, on 
 the chance that he may happen to be leading his horse with 
 his left hand, and holding his spear in his right," etc. 
 
 35 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tions than righthandedness because of the pe- 
 culiar liability of the right eye to be thrown 
 out of its function as the ''dominant" one, or 
 leader, by many ocular diseases, by injuries 
 from blows, and especially by a more disabling 
 optical defect (astigmatism, hyperopia, etc.)- 
 The struggle of nature to preserve the dominant 
 function of the right eye is patent in the case 
 of nearly every patient that comes into the 
 oculist's office. * The right will preserve its 
 acuteness even under a greater optical defect 
 than that of its fellow ; the left is the one more 
 frequently diseased and lost, and even with 
 lessened visual sharpness the right is often re- 
 tained as the dextral one. For there is tragedy 
 when from any cause the righteyed man in adult 
 life is made into a lefteyed patient. Every act 
 and co-ordination and judgment becomes slower, 
 more awkward, more difficult and more inexact 
 in result, because the visual factor in every act 
 (and even every thought) is furnished by the 
 opposite far-away and more inexpert center. 
 There are few greater afflictions than one I now 
 am witness of — paralysis of the upper lid of the 
 right eye in a righteyed person occurring in full 
 adult or late life. *The most amazing conse- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 quence of righteyedness is lateral curvature of 
 the spine. Approximately about 20,000,000 of 
 the people of the United States have lateral 
 curvature of the spine, and of these about three 
 fourths, or about 15,000,000, indirectly owe 
 their disease to righteyedness. The deforming 
 and crippling writing position which causes the 
 deformity of the 15,000,000, is due to the neces- 
 sity of bending the body and head to the left in 
 order that the right eye may see the pen point. 
 The right eye must see the intellectual thing 
 written even though the distortion of the back 
 and tragedy of a life result ! 
 
 When a righthanded person is made into a 
 lefthanded one by a broken arm, or by the equal 
 misfortune of a foolish parent wiser than 
 nature, the results are almost sure to be bane- 
 ful. If undertaken early enough in youth, the 
 foolishness of trying to train the right hand by 
 whipping, tying up the left, etc., may sometimes 
 succeed, but at the expense of a life of trial, 
 handicap, or even wretchedness and disease. 
 Ill success in life is often caused by this foUy. 
 It is chiefly the writing act that arouses the 
 sorry parent and the ambidexterity-crank to 
 their impertinent opposition. But it is precisely 
 
 37 
 
 ? 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the writing act which locates the speech-center 
 in the side of the brain opposite the writing 
 hand. Writing, bound up with speech and 
 memory, is the demonstrated origin of the local- 
 ization of the speech-center. Science, disease, 
 physiology, tumors of the brain, etc., have 
 proved that one may be lefthanded in every- 
 thing except writing, and that the speech 
 center is in the left half-brain. I have a patient 
 who, as a boy, was cruelly compelled to stop 
 writing with his left hand, and after years of 
 torment he was made a dextral writer. And 
 for forty years he has never been able to think 
 and write at the same time. He cannot write 
 the simplest letter that requires thought, plan- 
 ning, or judgment. He sends miles or waits 
 hours for a stenographer, and can dictate the 
 most technical engineering plans with clearness 
 and rapidity. Another patient has been made 
 mentally morbid, and a life of invalidism has 
 resulted from the same cause. In the United 
 y States there are about six million originally 
 or persisting lefthanded persons, a portion of 
 whom are mental and even physical cripples 
 from the injudicious antipathy of parents or 
 teachers to the ''south-pawed." In compara- 
 
 38 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tively few cases is the attempted cliange en- 
 tirely successful. They have a sufficiently hard 
 time to get lefthanded work benches, tools, etc., 
 and to pursue the avocations of the right- 
 handed, without doubling their handicap by 
 dividing the centers required in a composite act 
 between the two dissociate brain-halves. How 
 pitiable is the lot of the lefthanded soldier! 
 I have two thorough-going lefthanded patients 
 who by training have learned to shoot a rifle 
 from the right shoulder, but they depress the 
 right eye below the gunstock and awkwardly 
 sight with the left eye ! Wlien all his sinistral 
 functions are performed by the lefthanded man 
 by means of the cerebral centers located in the 
 right-brain hemispheres he is as efficient, quick, 
 intellectual, etc., as the righthanded person. 
 The Jewish lefthanded slingers, it is said, could 
 cut a hair set up as a target. Because there 
 are a few persons with the heart on the right 
 side of the chest it would seem to be even more 
 the duty of the ambidexterity societies and of 
 officious parents to remove it to the left side by 
 surgical operation ! . Let the lefthanded child 
 alone ! Nature is quite as wise as the ignorant 
 intermeddlers. For ages the stranger, the un- 
 
 39 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 known and unusual person has been looked 
 upon with dislike, and has even been persecuted 
 because he differed from the one without other 
 excellencies than that of being like his neigh- 
 bors, or like the majority of them. The dislike 
 of lefthandedness is a relic of the same vicious 
 egotism. The lefthanded person is stupidly 
 charged with being "sinister" and unlucky, 
 and all because ages ago to the left or shield- 
 hand was given the natural task of protecting 
 the heart and life of its master! 
 
 And a little quiet and unprejudiced observa- 
 tion would have shown that it is rather a 
 division of tasks, a happy and advisable differ- 
 entiation — ^not subordination — of function, that 
 is coming about in the jobs which the left hand 
 is commissioned to do. In the sterling old tasks 
 of shoveling, pitchforking, chopping with the 
 ax, etc., the left hand almost divides the honors 
 equally with the right. In locomotive-engineer 
 driving, it is indeed the left hand that is on the 
 throttle valve. Especially in the musician's 
 art both hands must be equally expert and 
 active. The fingering of the left hand of the 
 violinist is technically as fine and dextrous a 
 task as the bowing of the dextral hand. It is of 
 
 40 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 vast significance that all tasks should be divided 
 up and allotted to each hand, each eye and foot 
 (perhaps to each ear!) — all except the one of 
 intellect bound up with writing, speech, and 
 memory, which, necessarily single, must be 
 shocked into action by a single and not a dupli- 
 cated set of organs, which are placed only in 
 one cerebral hemisphere. It is of no advantage 
 to be able to eat with the knife or fork with 
 each hand alternately and equally" well ; it is a 
 positive disadvantage. Should every musician 
 have two pianos, one as now constructed and 
 another with the bass keys on the right, and 
 should he learn to play equally well upon each 
 piano? That is what ambidexterity means. 
 The poor lefthanded person is already almost 
 entirely shut out from any musical calling, ex- 
 cept that of singing, and there are many other 
 avocations in which he is handicapped or 
 doomed to failure. From this point of view 
 one may wonder if the number of the lefthanded 
 will really decrease in the struggle for existence 
 in civilization's progress of the future. There 
 are no statistics to help us decide the question. 
 The exclusion of such unfit ones will at least be 
 only hastened by any interference with nature's 
 
 41 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 produQtion of lefthancledness. With a very 
 few years in eliildhood of nascent riglithanded- 
 ness or lefthandedness started, the habit be- 
 comes so fixed that years of punishment, deri- 
 sion, strapping up the left hand and other 
 methods of torture are utterly x)owerless to 
 alter the developing and educating speech cen- 
 ter in the right-brain. 
 
 The bleatings, mooings, bellowings, roarings, 
 etc., of vertebrate animals, together with the 
 cries of the infant during its first months of 
 life, are not language, or even the beginnings 
 of language. Whether they express or are 
 understood to express desire, pain, anger or 
 passion, they are the voice, or suggestion of 
 the voice, of the organism as a whole, undiffer- 
 entiate, nonintellectual, — the cry of the abstract 
 physiologic machine, wanting or pained, and as 
 a unit ; they are not inspired or guided by vision 
 or by definite motived act. The air issues from 
 the caverns of appetite and emotion, and in 
 passing through the upper organs of respira- 
 tion is slightly transformed into inarticulate 
 sound. The vegetal or automatic organism is 
 its origin and end. If innervated by the corti- 
 cal centers these cries probably spring from a 
 
 42 
 
THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTHANDEDNESS 
 
 bilateral origin. Only when they become pur- 
 posive in the slightest degree, when the other 
 senses, and especially sight, are called in to 
 furnish data and help for the motived and 
 designed act, does the innervation of phonation 
 arise in a single or one-sided center; the con- 
 tinuous evolution of the speech-center thus 
 becomes established and progressive. The 
 "precise" but indefinite time at which this 
 monolaterality begins is the ^'precise" but in- 
 definite time when inarticulation becomes 
 articulation. Articulate phonation is the inter- 
 mediate of specialized and designed acts; it is 
 the voice of intellect, choice, and purpose. It is 
 compositely formed out of the factors of sight, 
 feeling, hearing, etc., furnished by individual, 
 topographically placed, and neighboring cere- 
 bral centers. In a certain individual right- 
 eyedness is doubtless the determining factor in 
 localizing the developing speech-center in the 
 left half -brain. The individual misfortune, pos- 
 sibly tragedy, comes from a compelled change 
 of plan after the localization on one side is 
 under way, or established. A higher error of 
 refraction in the right eye, or the results of 
 disease, such as keratitis, conjunctivitis, squint, 
 
 43 
 
y 
 
 RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 etc., may bring about the misfortune. To pro- 
 duce lefteyedness, when obviable, by reckless 
 operations is, in the surgeon, a scientific 
 blunder. To will and compel righthandedness 
 in the naturally lefthanded is a crime. 
 
 Physiologically, therefore, the reason why an 
 infant puts forth the right hand to grasp 
 objects is because the right eye is the one which 
 is nearest perfect visually, anatomically, or 
 optically. The law derived from the phylum of 
 the entire past is that the right eye and right 
 forefoot, or right hand, must work together. 
 In all animals the right eye governs the placing 
 and action of the right front foot, of the right 
 side of the body, the guarding against dangers 
 on the right side, etc. The left eye has the same 
 office for the left side. Heredity has place in 
 the creation of the more nearly perfect right 
 eye. If the left eye of the infant is the better 
 seeing eye it will gi^asp at objects with the left 
 hand, and become lefthanded. > Handedness, if 
 one may devise the word, becomes either right- 
 handedness or lefthandedness, according to the 
 dictating condition of the better eyedness, right 
 or left. 
 
 44 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHY IS A PARTICULAR CHILD RIGHTHANDED OR 
 LEFTHANDED? * 
 
 If, as I believe, the study of civilized people 
 shows that the special incidence of righthanded- 
 ness, and of lef thandednes^, and of mixed types, 
 is governed directly by ocular dominance, and 
 only indirectly and partially by heredity, a thor- 
 ough understanding of the subject will be 
 gained by a preliminary look at the precedent 
 animal function and habit. And this is epitom- 
 ized as right-eye dominance of general dextral 
 or right-side function, and left-eye dominance 
 of general sinistral function. To begin with, 
 embryology demonstrates the existence of vis- 
 ion long before muscles, so that historically and 
 evolutionally vision governs motility; the very 
 cleavage of the brain in the two so independent 
 halves of all types was doubtless due to the 
 unilateralism and independence of ocular func- 
 tion. The more primitive the type the more 
 on one side of the head was the governing eye. 
 
 Long Island Medical Journal, November, 1907. 
 
 45 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 and the more independent it was of its fellow 
 upon the other side. A motion to strike one eye 
 from its side does not cause the other eye to 
 wink or to protect itself or the animal from 
 injury. One eye governed one side of the body 
 (because vision must incite and control all 
 action), especially the co-ordinated front foot of 
 that side, but also the hind one of that side to a 
 less degree or less accurately; and the other 
 eye acted for the other lateral organs in the 
 same way. Fewer and less accurately co-ordi- 
 nated commissural fibers between the two hemi- 
 spheres were then necessary than when later 
 complication and specialization arose. It is 
 evident that when one eye was placed upon one 
 side of the head, not looking forward, and 
 separated from the other by a protruding mass 
 of organs and bony structures, it must act inde- 
 pendently of the other, to see objects upon that 
 side of the body, to protect it, and to govern 
 the muscles of its side. So long as the forefeet 
 are equally used, i.e., so long as no differentia- 
 tion of their function arises, there can be no 
 question of the existence of righthandedness, or 
 rightfootedness. The chief, most frequent, 
 most necessary of all animalian four-footed 
 
 46 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 function is placing first one front foot, and then 
 the other front foot, in the safe and right place 
 and position, especially in rapid motion, fight- 
 ing, defence, etc., etc. That placing of the right 
 forefoot must be dominated by the right eye, 
 and of the left forefoot by the left eye. There 
 is simply divided dominance of the eyes, each 
 supreme in the control of its correlated lateral 
 organs. The peculiarities of the avoidance by 
 a horse of a stone or log in the road, by, say, the 
 right hindfoot, the stone at the instant out of 
 sight, and the right eye perhaps governing the 
 avoidance of a similar impediment in front by 
 the right forefoot, is a most instructive thing. 
 The co-ordination of eye and front foot is more 
 exact, and the very awkwardness of the hind- 
 foot is significant. 
 
 The approach toward binocular fusion, the 
 advance of the eyes toward the front of the 
 skull, the degree of forward-lookingness, if one 
 may so speak, is measured and indicated by the 
 progress toward parallelism of the ocular axes. 
 Recapitulated, this progress towards parallel- 
 ism is steady from lower to higher types, reach- 
 ing complete parallelism only in man. 
 . In the most civilized of humans, the literary 
 
 47 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 and handicraft workers, the progress does not 
 end with parallelism, but the ocular axes must 
 be sharply converged upon a point 12 or 15 
 inches from the ejes for ten or more hours a 
 day.* And with every step of this progress in 
 human beings there must be a like increase of 
 complexity in the interrelations between the 
 ocular government of common or bilateral 
 movements and functions. The number of 
 things to be seen by both eyes, and to be done 
 by both hands, etc., is constantly increasing. 
 But, pari passu, there is an equal differentiation 
 and specialization of functions of the two hands. 
 With every expertness gained, one hand is told 
 off to that extremely specialized task, and the 
 other perhaps to another, but at least never to 
 the same. And still the old great rule, gen- 
 erally speaking, not only remains in force, but 
 is increasingly observed : In the righthanded 
 the dextral hand is chosen more and more for 
 the heavier, the higher, more intellectual, more 
 skilled, more difficult, more minute, more de- 
 tailed task, and the left is still the holding. 
 
 * Lack of converging power to carry this out gives the 
 practical oculist his pathologic problems of exophoria and 
 
 divergent strabismus. 
 
 48 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 assisting, and complementary helper. In the 
 lefthanded the rule is reversed, but there is no 
 inferiority in the expertness, etc., of the left 
 hand in these cases, although a high percent of 
 their ancestors were righthanded. 
 
 The rightsided cerebral convolutions retain 
 all the aptitude for governing skilled functions 
 which the left half-brain possesses in the ma- 
 jority. The explanation of this seeming con- 
 tradiction of evolutional law is seen in the 
 recognition of the fact that ''the ontogeny 
 repeats the phylogeny"^ — for righthandedness 
 and lefthandedness is not prenatal in origin. It 
 begins with the infant's coincident function of 
 eye and hand, and begins at the period of onto- 
 genetic developraent corresponding to that of 
 the phylum when forefeet began to be used as 
 hands, and when one hand began to be preferen- 
 tially or necessarily used for a special task. In 
 human historic development it emerges into 
 clear view with the specialization of the left as 
 the shield-hand and holding-hand, and of the 
 right as the spear-hand, the counting-hand, etc., 
 and finally as the writing-hand. It is thus a 
 late acquirement of the phylum. Thus the in- 
 dividual born now begins fo acquire it, for 
 
 4 49 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 either half-brain, at about six months of age, 
 and the lefthanded is as quick to learn it and 
 is just as expert with his left hand as his right- 
 handed brother with his right hand. 
 
 Two things need to be recognized, empha- 
 sized, and always borne in mind: First, there 
 is no inheritance of completed mechanism, or 
 even of predisposition towards it. Either cere- 
 bral hemisphere may be the seat of the speech- 
 center, and it may innervate the more expert 
 hand, with absolutely no inferiority of expert- 
 ness in the less commonly chosen right half- 
 brain.* Thus heredity has, directly, nothing 
 whatever to do with the existence of the 94 
 percent of righthanded, and 6 percent of 
 lefthanded. If those who are Mendel-crazed, 
 or who see 'Hhe iron and adamantine law of 
 inheritance" in everything, ever tried to trace 
 such supposed laws in the incidence of right- 
 handedness, they quickly abandoned the hunt. 
 Because they found that here no such ''iron 
 
 * The fact is a striking example of how little pathology 
 of the laboratory kind has to do with life, function, or the 
 origins of diseases. It is a matter of vast significance to a 
 man whether he is righthanded or lefthanded, or of mixed 
 type. But millions of slides by all pathologists could not 
 tell to which class the dead man belonged. 
 
 50 
 
A HIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 law" exists (it exists nowhere, forsootli!), and 
 that some other mysterious agency is at work, 
 of which they could have no knowledge. ' ' The 
 wind bloweth where it listeth," and the least 
 or the most investigation of actual cases shows 
 that lefthandedness or righthandedness arises 
 most incongruously for the iron-law-of-heredity 
 criers, has even nothing to do with heredity 
 directly. For several generations, e.g., neither 
 paternal nor maternal ancestors of two children 
 were lefthanded, and suddenly those two chil- 
 dren are found to be lefthanded ! 
 
 Secondly, just as there is no endowment of 
 righthandedness or lefthandedness, as a com- 
 pleted mechanism, nor even of any sign of an 
 inherited exceptional aptitude, so there is no 
 completedness of the acquirement. Every baby 
 of a year of age shows some beginnings of the 
 peculiar expertness, but the progress in special- 
 ization and in the acquirement of kinds and 
 degrees of expertness never ceases while life 
 lasts. And there are as many mixes of pe- 
 culiarities as there are individuals; there are 
 almost as many anomalous as there are typical 
 cases. As a rule, of course, the hand chosen 
 for the most expert tasks is increasingly chosen, 
 
 51 
 
\ 
 
 RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 and people tend to fall into two great classes, 
 the righthanded and the lefthanded. All left- 
 handed mechanics (and now everybody uses 
 machines!) are handicapped and bothered by 
 the fact that all machines, even to screws, are 
 made for the righthanded. Not to be forgotten 
 also is the nmnber, large in the aggregate, of 
 the righthanded who, by accident, injury, etc., 
 lose the superior expertness of the right eye, 
 right hand, right leg or right foot; and, con- 
 versely, the number of the lefthanded who 
 suffer similarly as regards their sinistral ex- 
 pertness. In such cases there is a transfer of 
 task to the opposite organs, and a slow, difficult, 
 and always imperfect expertness is acquired. 
 But in every case there is a crippling, and a 
 lessening of productive capacity, a disadvantag- 
 ing in the struggle. And more surely is there a 
 mixing from the ground up, or rather from the 
 top of the head down, of hitherto co-ordinated 
 and related functions. The center for the in- 
 termediation of an absolutely necessary psychic 
 and neurologic datmn of the engineered com- 
 posite act has to be transferred to the opposite 
 side of the brain. There is, of course, halting, 
 indecision, slowness, or genuine inhibition of 
 
 52 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 function because of the difficulty of correlating 
 the data from the two sides of the brain. Many 
 a case of stuttering, probably most, slowness 
 and morbidities of speech, etc., are due to this 
 division or misplacement of the innervating 
 centers in opposed cerebral hemispheres — all 
 bound with righteyedness, righthandedness, or 
 the opposites, etc. 
 
 Think also of the appalling amount of misery, 
 mental and physical, the disease, the shame, 
 that for untold ages has been thrust upon the 
 lefthanded by parents, social custom, etc. 
 There is even now scarcely a poor lefthanded 
 child who is not cursed by the attempt to make 
 him righthanded. There are about six million 
 naturally lefthanded in the United States! 
 Every one of them, if not absolutely diseased, 
 is made morbid, less happy, handicapped, by 
 the peculiarity a little, by the cruelty of chang- 
 ing it a vast deal. Add the millions of millions 
 that must have lived since the first finger of 
 the dextral hand was held up in counting! In 
 savage times the savage mother and father, and 
 tribe, must have horribly maltreated the poor 
 unfortunates. There is only a little proof of 
 this in the Keep to the Right of our common 
 
 53 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 law, in the wrong and ignominy associated with 
 the words sinister, gauche, etc., and the honor 
 born of mere contrast, of course, in right, dex- 
 ytroiis, dexterity, etc. 
 
 ' Focus the converging lines of the argamient ! 
 The 94 percent by all laws of inheritance and 
 of mechanics should long ago have extinguished 
 the relatively few lefthanded anomalies. They 
 persist, and perhaps increasingly. The mixed 
 types are certainly increasing. The vindictive 
 effect of persecution, shame, and cruelty, united 
 to the number of the mutilated, would add 
 powerfully to exclude them in the long history 
 of human evolution. They reappear as numer- 
 ously, as mysteriously, apparently as i] logi- 
 cally as ever, and certainly in mockery of any 
 known law of heredity. AVhy? 
 
 To understand the answer it should be re- 
 membered that forward movement of a four- 
 footed animal, composed of two poorly united 
 or co-ordinated longitudinal halves, must be by 
 means of the governors of all movement — 
 vision. One organ of this vision was for the 
 one badly co-ordinated half-body, the other for 
 the opposite half. The brain was halved, also, 
 but a slow and poor correlating mechanism was 
 
 .'34 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 begun and is being improved, at present much 
 improved. Even now the right eye is united in 
 function with the right hand, the right foot, 
 etc., and especially with language, the crowning 
 achievement of humanization. The centers of 
 righteyedness, righthandedness, rightfooted- 
 ness, speech, and writing (with memory and 
 intellect) must be topographically in the left 
 cerebral hemisphere to insure speed, accuracy, 
 and co-ordination of united sensation, thought, 
 will, and action. In the lefthanded, of course, 
 the same law holds of the right side of the 
 brain. In one or in the other, therefore, a little 
 by inheritance, and more by necessity — but not 
 divided or mixed! That is disease — and the 
 god of evolution is a physiologist, not a pathol- 
 ogist! (He seems to have made some pathol- 
 ogists, but not intentionally; and they are 
 pathological!) 
 
 The right cerebral mechanism, although dis- 
 used for speech-function ^d righthand func- 
 tion for 94 percent of all ancestors, and for a 
 special family group, for untold generations, 
 still retains an equal aptitude and mechanism 
 for function with th^ left. Th5 peripheral 
 mechanism of left hand, left foot, etc., also 
 
 55 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 retain their coequal educability and proficiency. 
 What varies, and what is the special variant 
 cause beyond the complete control of the 
 biologic mechanic, which induces the individual 
 incidence of righthandedness and of lefthanded- 
 ness? 
 
 It is the eyeball. I have measured 20,000 or 
 30,000, and no one was perfect in shape. It is a 
 poor and makeshift mechanism even apart from 
 its morphology; but, so difficult, so impossible, 
 is the task of making it mathematically perfect 
 in shape, i.e., to one-three-hundredth of an inch 
 of ametropia (and that may be pathologic in 
 resultant function) that such perfection of di- 
 mensions has been impossible. An approach to 
 that perfection has been attained in the ages, 
 and by means of that most powerful of all the 
 agents, the exclusion of the unfit, the exclusion 
 of the ocularly unfit. 
 
 When the child begins to reach out for and 
 to seize upon objects with its hands, the ques- 
 tion arises at once — with which hand? One 
 is usually all that is necessary, and one must be 
 selected. Then begins either the life-long and 
 increasing ^'eference, selection, and selectabil- 
 ity of the right, or of the left — or the history 
 
 5G 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 and perfecting of rigiitliandedness, or of left- 
 handedness. The significant thing is tlie order 
 in which the peripheral functions appear and 
 develop in the child. First of all, long preced- 
 ing, causing, and governing all others, espe- 
 cially of motion, is Vision. The lesson of 
 embryology is illustrated in the baby's life. 
 When the muscles of the arm and hand are 
 ready for any movement, vision has been long 
 ready to direct it and make it purposive. Then 
 the correlated center for speech-phonation is 
 located in the brain-half opposite that of the 
 dextral eye in the righteyed, and vice versa in 
 the lefteyed. The foot-and-leg correlation is 
 latest and always more imperfect and variant. 
 Many tests may be made of the now well- 
 known fact I have so long urged of the domi- 
 nance of one eye in vision; of the existence, 
 under certain circumstances, of two images of 
 one object (not strabismic, but normal and 
 necessary) ; and of the psychic ignoring of the 
 image of the nondominant eye. A sheet of 
 paper vertically held before the eye, with the 
 edge against the nose, followed by alternate 
 closure and opening of each eye, illustrates; 
 or the pencil or finger may be held in almost 
 
 57 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 any position and tlie gaze fixed beyond it. Other 
 devices prove that certainty of manual seizure, 
 accuracy of mental representations of spacial, 
 topographic, and stereoscopic relations (with 
 precision, safety, etc., of co-ordinated actions) 
 depend upon the frequent preference of the 
 image of one eye, and the ignoring of that of 
 the other. The right eye and right hand must 
 work together, the right eye usually governing 
 the actions of the right hand; and the same of 
 the sinistral organs. 
 
 If now the right eye is more defective, more 
 ametropic, if its vision is poorer, more difficult, 
 or more painful than that of the left, the left 
 eye must be chosen to govern hand-action, and 
 so, of course, the left hand will become habit- 
 ually the more chosen, the more expert, and the 
 more educated, for the special task, and soon 
 the child is seen to be lef thanded ! Fight it all, 
 tie the left hand behind the back, beat it, shame 
 the child? Not so; the cause, the faulty right 
 eye, will remain uncorrected and unthought of 
 by all such absurdities and cruelties. 
 
 In the 94 percent and at the beginning of the 
 function of handedness, the right eye is the 
 better eye. Even in adults oculists have found 
 
 58 
 
A RIGHTHANDED OR LEFTHANDED CHILD 
 
 out that, as a large rule, the right eye is more 
 nearly perfect than the left, is less subject to 
 disease, accident, etc., and that the ''un- 
 conscious ' ' wisdom of the organism will protect 
 and cure it more certainly than the left (except, 
 of course, in the case of the lefteyed). And 
 when righteyedness is once established, Nature 
 will preserve it in despite of later oncoming 
 amblyopia, ametropia, or disease, which then 
 handicap it much more than the left. The role 
 of heredity is that of passing down the more 
 nearly perfectly formed eyes and the more 
 nearly perfect right eyeball. The directly act- 
 ing exceptional cause is the more imperfectly 
 functioning right one at the time handedness 
 is to become either the right or the left variety. 
 I could adduce a hundred clinical proofs of this. 
 And it is not to be forgotten that the babe's 
 eyeballs are smaller, and hence more ametropic 
 than larger eyeballs, surely more hyperopic 
 morphologically — a fact of most suggestive 
 importance. 
 
 A hundred questions and considerations 
 arise: Handicap the infant's left eye in begin- 
 ning lefthandedness? The problems of equi- 
 dominance, and of divided dominance? The 
 
 59 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ophthalmic surgeon's duty in disease and 
 operations'? The blunder often committed by 
 opticians and oculists of bad glasses which 
 cripple the dominant, and stimulate the non- 
 dominant eye? The treatment of the maimed, 
 the one-eyed, the paralytics, etc.? The treat- 
 ment of those so pathetically and badly wronged 
 by the ' ' ambidexterity ' ' foolish ones I The pre- 
 vention of the cases of 27 percent of all the 
 population who have lateral curvature of the 
 spine, caused by ocular function and ocular 
 malfunction ? The stopping of the horrid writ- 
 ing posture of everybody? The arousing of 
 the medical world to the awful importance of 
 the eyes as causes of a hundred diseases ? The 
 arousing of the Darwinians to the role of bad 
 eyes as the great cause of the exclusion of the 
 unfit? These and many such questions are, 
 indeed, most living, most imperative, but not to 
 be entered upon here. 
 
 60 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RULE OF THE ROAD.* 
 
 The localization through war and barter of 
 the cerebral centers of speech and writing (and 
 hence of intellect) of 94 percent of the popula- 
 tion in the left half -brain is the cause of right- 
 handedness. f The increase of the necessary 
 differentiation of bodily and mental function 
 by the co-ordination of associated cerebral cen- 
 ters has resulted in a general righthandedness, 
 righteyedness, etc., the data by vision, audition, 
 and for action of the right leg and foot for 
 associated function, compelling a location of 
 all these centers in the same left-brain and 
 closely linked with the determining faculty of 
 speech and writing. With the six percent of 
 lefthanded, the reverse of all this takes place. 
 The mystery of the origin of righthandedness 
 is thus cleared up. With this explanation 
 manifest the other concum^ent mystery of the 
 rule of the road is of easy solution. Right- 
 handedness, plus the variant circumstances o*f 
 
 * Popular Science Monthly, December, 1907. 
 t See Popular Science Monthly, August, 1904. 
 
 61 
 
 /;f^BRA^ 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 civilization, the reaction of the righthanded 
 organism to the environment (in the language 
 of evolution), explains all the puzzles of the 
 rule of the road. 
 
 Primitive war, as Homer, chivalry, and pres- 
 ent-day savage customs demonstrate, regard- 
 less of the number of combatants, was a matter 
 of individual encounter, of hand-to-hand con- 
 flict. Even when archery, and throwing of 
 spears, javelins, etc., came into use the essential 
 individualism was not changed, and the shield- 
 ing of the left side, and aggressive use of the 
 right hand continued. All military tactics and 
 drill of numbers was then established as right- 
 handed, down to the most minute particular — 
 and so continues, indeed, although the flung 
 weapon weighs a thousand pounds instead of 
 one or two pounds, and is thrown five miles in- 
 stead of twenty or fifty feet. After the Trojan 
 war, chariots fell more and more into disuse, 
 and cavalry began to take their place, but this 
 in no way changed the evolution of righthanded 
 tactics. In Alexander's time the right flank of 
 the phalanx was the post of honor, called the 
 head, the left the tail, and marches and move- 
 ments were made by the right. The commander 
 
 62 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 had his station on the right. So strongly estab- 
 lished was righthandedness as early as the half- 
 legendary amazonian times, that the Amazon 
 had her right breast excised in order that she 
 might hurl the javelin and shoot the arrow with 
 greater freedom and accuracy. 
 
 Thus not only righthandedness in the vast 
 majority of people, but with it righteyedness, 
 etc., firmly fixed and differentiated, comes down 
 to the beginnings of civilization. But this is far 
 from implying that in meeting, either two or 
 thousands of people invariably passed each 
 other to the right. This is proved by the 
 classical instance given by Dante in the eigh- 
 teenth Canto of the Inferno in these words — 
 translation of Longfellow: 
 
 Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, 
 The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge. 
 Have chosen a mode to pass the people over ; 
 
 For all upon one side upon the Castle 
 
 Their faces have, and go unto St. Peter's; 
 On the other side they go unto the mountain. 
 
 Not only was the Papal order necessary to 
 make the crowd keep to the right in coming and 
 going, but a barriet was erected along the 
 
 63 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 middle of the bridge so that the crowd could 
 not interfere with each other. Further par- 
 ticulars are given in Longfellow's note to the 
 passage, and by other commentators of Dante. 
 In our own times the custom of foot-passengers 
 is more firmly established, ''as was well illus- 
 trated recently in the Paris Exhibition in the 
 case of the two large wooden bridges erected 
 opposite the Trocadero to convey foot-passen- 
 gers over the roadway. Here, although for 
 what reason was not apparent, the authorities 
 commanded the people to pass over the bridges 
 to the left, instead, as in the case of other 
 bridges in the same exhibition to the right. 
 After crossing the bridges the majority of the 
 crowd would be seen bearing to the right, caus- 
 ing endless pushing in crowded days." But 
 that many, especially women and children, are 
 to-day reckless of the rule, is illustrated in the 
 crowded side- walks of American cities. 
 
 Whenever, and that was generally, the cus- 
 tom and rule of orderly government was estab- 
 lished by military usage, the ancient and per^^ 
 sistent habit of passing to the right arose natu- 
 rally from the necessity of keeping the enemyj 
 on the left side. This t*is the shielded side 
 
 64 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 and gave combatants greater safety, as well as 
 insured greater freedom and efficiency for tlie 
 aggressive right arm and hand. 
 
 The crux of the difficulty in explaining diver- 
 gent usage is encountered by the strange 
 seeming anomaly of English practice. Wher- 
 ever English usage obtains, the carriages and 
 horsemen pass to the left, although foot-passen- 
 gers pass to the right. That the foot-passengers 
 keep to the right is natural, because it was 
 derived from ages of military precedent. But 
 another and overlooked fact doubtless con- 
 tributed to prevent the English walkers from 
 adopting the wagoner's rule of passing to the 
 left. This was the growth of town and of city- 
 life. All urban life was conditioned by narrow 
 streets, so narrow that our modern city alleys 
 are in comparison wide.* At first, indeed, there 
 
 * St. Evremoncl makes his visitor say that in the Paris of 
 his time the streets were muddy whether it rained or not, 
 because everybody threw rubbish of all kinds into the middle 
 of the streets. Ladies had to be carried across the central 
 guttei,- on the backs of their servants. Men wore top-boots, 
 like those of postilions. Blocks of vehicles constantly occurred, 
 and then there was no respect of persons; ladies whose car- 
 riages happened to be entangled in them had to listen to the 
 most frightful oaths and langxiage. There were often duels 
 with whips. Victory did not remain always with the most 
 
 5 65 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 were no sidewalks, and there was room at the 
 sides, when a cart or carriage occupied the cen- 
 ter, for only one person to walk between the 
 wagon and the houses. Hence plazas, open 
 spaces and squares, were the meeting places of 
 the citizens. Quarrels and fighting were always 
 taking place in the "streets," garbage and 
 refuse {gare a I'eau!) was thrown from the 
 windows into the center of the streets — which 
 thus became open sewers, and the mud, etc., of 
 passing vehicles had to be avoided with great 
 dexterity by the foot-passers. And literally 
 with great ''dexterity." The left or shielded 
 side, although shields might not be used, would 
 naturally be that presented to the center of the 
 street. The right side was thus chosto to keep 
 the right hand or armed side of the body free 
 for action, to avoid the mud, to escape the 
 refuse flung from above, etc. And if one pro- 
 
 foul -mouthed. The most dilapidated fiacre would have re- 
 mained where it was until nightfall sooner than have made 
 way for a court-carriage. Blind people and blind mendicants, 
 criminals and pickpockets thronged everywhere. To the clash- 
 ing of bells were added the shouts and cries of the perambulat- 
 ing dealers in vegetables, milk, fruit, rags, sand, brooms, fish, 
 and water. The water-carriers numbered some 20,000, each 
 of whom distributed from 30 to 40 pails a day. The tumult 
 of cries kept up night as well as day. 
 
 6^ 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 tected a lady, she was as to-day, given the side 
 next the house-walls. When wider streets and 
 sidewalks came into existence the right-passing 
 custom was already established; and the still- 
 remaining narrow ones in old cities insured its 
 maintenance. 
 
 But why did the English early adopt the 
 habit of passing their vehicles to the left? The 
 contradictory rules have tormented visitors, 
 evolutionists, the correspondents of Notes and 
 Queries, and many periodicals of the last one 
 hundred years, and have been epitomized in 
 many forms, the most common being this : 
 
 The rule of the road is a paradox quite 
 
 In riding or driving along; 
 If you keep to the left you are sure to be right ; 
 
 If you keep to the right you'll be wrong. 
 But in walking, a different custom applies, 
 
 And just the reverse is the rule ; 
 If you keep to the right, you'll be right, safe and wise ; 
 
 If you keep to the left, you're a fool. 
 
 The English rule of the road as to vehicles 
 obtains on the continent only in some Swiss 
 Cantons next to Italy, and in Italy. Nowhere, 
 apparently do foot-passengers, in meeting, ever 
 pass to the left. The method of passing when 
 
 67 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 overtaking another wagon or carriage is also a 
 result of that adopted in meeting. If wagons 
 pass to the right they overtake to the left, and 
 vice versa. The rule of all nations at sea, in- 
 cluding the English, is uniform — Port your 
 helm! — i.e., pass to the right! This interna- 
 tional rule was settled in 1862, yet Harper's 
 ''Book of Facts" says that near Great Britain 
 alone there were in the six years ending 1895, 
 some 13,000 collisions at sea. 
 
 The English rule of the road was of course 
 socially recogTiized long in advance of any 
 formal laws or decisions on the subject. So far 
 as I can learn, the first Act of Parliament was 
 enacted in 1835, and reads as follows : 
 
 Any person driving any carnage whatsoever, or riding 
 any horse or other animal, who meeting any other carriage 
 or horse or other animal, shall not keep his carnage or hoi'se 
 or other animal on the left or near side of the road or street, 
 or, if passing any other can-iage or horse or other animal 
 gomg in the same direction shall not in all eases where it is 
 practicable go and pass to the right or off side of such other 
 carriage or horse or other animal, shall be liable to a fine not 
 exceedmg 10 shillings. 
 
 Any person ridmg any horse, and leading any other horse, 
 who shall not keep such led horse on the side farthest away 
 from any can*iage or person passing him on any public road 
 or in any street of a town shall be liable to a fine not exceed- 
 ing 10 shillings. (In 14 and 15 Vict. Cap. 92, Sec. XIII.) 
 
 68 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 The led horse, and especially if the man is 
 himself mounted, requires the man's right hand 
 in leading on the halter of the led horse. An- 
 other evident reason why the led horse should 
 be at the right edge of the road is to avoid 
 dangers, both to the led horse and to the ap- 
 proaching person, if the led horse were to pass 
 in the center of the road, and thus graze the 
 passing vehicle, man, or animals. 
 
 The universal ancient custom, derived from 
 military drill and righthanded habit, of passing 
 to the right, was therefore unexceptionally 
 continued by all nations except two — England 
 and Italy — and in these two it was continued 
 as to sea-going vessels, as to led horses, and 
 as to foot-passengers. But by these two nations 
 the strange exception is found that vehicles pass 
 to the left. Why? 
 
 The suggestion has been made that in Eng- 
 land and Italy the diligences, and post-coaches, 
 had to be protected from highwaymen and 
 brigands and this was done by armed postil- 
 ions; these sat of course on the near or left- 
 hand horses, because they were righthanded 
 men (and thus mounted from the left side of 
 the horse), and also because in driving the left 
 
 G9 
 
RIGHTHx\NDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 hand held the rein while the right hand was 
 kept free to handle the firearms. The theory 
 is that they passed to the left in order the better 
 to fight the highwaymen who were thus kept on 
 the right side. This explanation is scarcely 
 explanatory. Were highwaymen not as com- 
 mon in other countries as in Italy and England? 
 Could they not and would they not as footmen 
 attack from the left side of the road as well as 
 from the right? Usage so widespread must 
 have a far more generally-acting and ancient 
 habit beliind it than this of robbery. All such 
 habits as the rule of the road must have sprung 
 from many and more primitive and humble 
 origins, from the necessities or customs of the 
 common people, in fact, whence as here the few 
 later diligences and post-coaches derived their 
 habits. The conscious legal enactment is 
 merely the late acceptance of centuries of 
 unconscious custom. If suddenly springing into 
 existence a general change must be the response 
 to a new circumstance of powerful and general 
 application. 
 
 Contributing customs or necessities may have 
 co-operated to effect the change in Italy and 
 England from the natural passage of vehicles 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 to the right, making them pass to the left, while 
 foot-passengers, vessels, etc., continued to pass 
 to the right. But it has been overlooked that 
 before vehicles had come into use horseback- 
 riding must have set the fashion in passing 
 because the riding of horses, asses, mules, etc., 
 must have long preceded the existence of the 
 wheeled vehicle of any kind. For perhaps a 
 thousand years (as now in a large part of the 
 earth's surface) it must have been impossible 
 for transportation of goods or men to be 
 effected by wagons, and only by horses, pack- 
 mules, etc. During this time the rule of the 
 road must have been fixed pretty rigidly, espe- 
 cially as the narrow 'Hrail" or path would not 
 everywhere allow meeting riders to pass, but 
 only in certain wider or more open spaces. In 
 all civilized countries, except the two men- 
 tioned, the fact that subsequent customs 
 demand the passage to the right shows that dur- 
 ing the preceding centuries, the ridden horses 
 and pack-animals must have passed to the right. 
 One can scarcely doubt that the ridden horses 
 of England and Italy did the same. This seems 
 only to deepen the mystery of their contrary 
 practice to-day. 
 
 71 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 The mystery I suspect is resolved by the for- 
 gotten fact of the tremendous, fashion-setting, 
 and centuries-long influence of chivalry with its 
 tourneys, joustings, and knightly battles on 
 horseback, with ax, sword, spear, tilting lance, 
 or pole. Those who have studied and realize 
 the vast domination of chivalry can easily com- 
 prehend the role it played as its vogue after 
 centuries melted into plebeian tilling the soil, 
 commercialism, and roads covered with wagons, 
 coaches, etc. The horseback fights and mock- 
 battles of the troubadours, minnesingers, 
 knights, and aristocrats of these centuries were 
 possible only by the contestants meeting and 
 passing to the left. It is needless to illustrate 
 the fact from histories of chivalry, from 
 medieval legends, tales, adventures, etc., 
 whether of the Arthurian cycle, or Ariosto, or 
 a hundred aftercomers. The club, spear, sword 
 or pole must be held in the right hand and the 
 reins in the left; the horses and riders passed 
 necessarily to the left. There could have been 
 no game or reality of battle if the passing were 
 to the right. The holding the spear, lance, ax 
 or pole was dictated by righthandedness, and 
 to fight each other they had to pass to the left. 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Thus rightliandedness begot left-passing, owing 
 to the peculiar conditions of the battling or 
 jousting. 
 
 The conclusion draws itself: this must have 
 settled the fashion of horses (and riders) pass- 
 ing to the left wherever chivalry was merged 
 into wagoning by an evolutionary process. I 
 judge it was thus transformed in Italy and Eng- 
 land, and that on the continent the wagon and 
 post-chaise were not slowly derived from the 
 fashion of chivalry. We have a capital proof 
 of the fact, as regards England, where anti- 
 quarian research demonstrates that the pos- 
 tilion phase of development was not long-con- 
 tinued or generally practised. For the postilion 
 period (dominative and even tyrannical in 
 France, as her literature shows) must evolu- 
 tionallv be considered as the intermediate be- 
 tween horseback-riding, and driving from the 
 wagon- seat or box. In England the driver, as 
 it were, jumped directly upon the wagon-seat 
 from the ground, or from the back of the horse 
 without a vehicle, while on the continent, for 
 hundreds of years, the horse of the rider hauled 
 a vehicle behind him, and the representative of 
 the former knight and rider became a postilion. 
 
 73 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Lack of information compels me to confess tliat 
 the actual and detailed steps of the evolution 
 in Italy are not clear to me. But in England 
 the postilion's office was short or non-existent, 
 and in early times the drivers of wagons, carts, 
 etc., walked, of course, on the left or near side 
 of the horse or team. Prohably the walking 
 was because a single horse, instead of two or 
 four, was the rule, as the costermonger's cart 
 and the Irish car to-dav illustrate. On the 
 continent the teams were of two, or four, or 
 more horses, and the postilion rode one of the 
 "near" horses; this may be seen in pictures of 
 Paul Lacroix, The Eighteenth Century, espe- 
 cially that of the "Carabas," on page 448. By 
 the seventeenth century, as is shown on pages 
 6, 44, etc., the driver had mounted on the box, 
 but the postilion was continued on the wheel- 
 horse or, in case of three or four pairs of horses, 
 on the near leader of the team. There can be 
 no doubt that those who have explained the 
 rule of the road for vehicles, as due to the 
 position of the driver or postilion on the box or 
 seat, took post hoc for propter hoc; the custom 
 had already been long established before either 
 variant arose. The extreme of the post hoc 
 
 74 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 argument is seen in the frequently adduced 
 statement that to have the whip-hand free, the 
 driver sits on the right side of the seat, and 
 hence passes to the left in order that he may 
 better see that the wheels of the two vehicles do 
 not collide. A similar illusory explanation 
 credits the English left-passing to the fact that 
 the early drivers walked on the left of the 
 horses, and consequently they passed to the left 
 to avoid being ground between the two sets of 
 wheels. King Arthur and Tristram and their 
 fellows had settled that, one judges, a thousand 
 years previously. 
 
 Why did the American colonists from Eng- 
 land reverse the rule of the mother country as 
 to vehicles passing to the left? That is the 
 remaining riddle which has perplexed every 
 writer upon the subject. There seems to be no 
 exception, the Virginia colonists, who were so 
 largely horseback riders, developed the rule of 
 passing to the right as spontaneously as the 
 New Englanders. In Canada there appears to 
 have been a noteworthy indecision in earlier 
 days ; in some places, as Toronto and St. John, 
 New Brunswick, the English custom prevailed. 
 My reports are that to-day the American cus- 
 
 75 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 torn, if we may so name it (passing to the right) 
 is being increasingly adopted. 
 
 The change of the colonists to the American 
 practice has been credited to the necessity of 
 keeping to the right in snow drifted roadways — 
 surely an invalid argument from evident rea- 
 sons. The use of ox-teams is also said to have 
 brought the change about. This was perhaps a 
 minor contributory cause, but, like the preced- 
 ing, will not explain the spontaneity and uni- 
 versality of the American habit. Another 
 explanation that has been offered for our i^ass- 
 ing to the right is that in early days of narrow 
 and depressed roads the driver could the better 
 judge of the danger from the bank or *Mift" of 
 the roadway on the right. Lastly, it has been 
 suggested that lurking savages in the woods at 
 the sides (both sides) of the road made the 
 change of practice. But just how either cause 
 compelled the colonial wagoners to pass to the 
 right, or how they bettered their condition by 
 doing so, one vainly tries to discover. 
 
 The real explanation of the change comes to 
 light in a more careful observation and history 
 of the actual facts and conditions of the colonial 
 immigrants. In the first place, they were not 
 
 76 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 in the beginning even preponderatingly Eng- 
 lish. We appear prone to forget that the first 
 Puritan settlers were mostly Dutch, to which 
 France quickly added her complement, both of 
 continental or right-passing people. Then it 
 must be remembered that the long first period 
 of settlement was not only wagonless, but even 
 horseless, and even English folk when afoot 
 had never ceased to be right-passers. The ox- 
 team, the ridden horse, and the led horse, were 
 the first means of transportation, and all these 
 methods would insure the beginnings of the 
 customs of right-passing and soon establish it 
 as the rule. It must have been a long and 
 fashion-fixing period before the wheeled vehicle 
 could have come into any general use to meddle 
 with the already established custom of right- 
 passing. Most powerful too must have been 
 the dominating factor of the long interregnum, 
 disuse of the English custom, whereby men's 
 minds were freed from the influence of the 
 special force which had made the old English 
 custom differ from that of the continent. In 
 the old countries war and jealousy, quarrels 
 and crime made men watchful of each other, 
 kept old customs in vigor, etc., while with our 
 
 77 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 colonists the common enemy banded onr an- 
 cestors together in friendship and mutual trust. 
 The habits of the continental immigrant also 
 came into action, so that with the factors of dis- 
 use, of walkers, of horseback-riders, of ox-teams, 
 etc., all uniting, the more natural and universal 
 law came to be customary. Two other necessi- 
 ties co-operated to win the easy establishment of 
 the change : When wagons came into use they 
 were hauled by two, by three, often by four or 
 even by six horses or mules. The driver, of 
 course, being a righthanded man, sat upon the 
 near wheel-horse, and guided the leaders by the 
 "jerk- line," held again of course in the left 
 hand. The "prairie schooner" was an illustra- 
 tion of this universal American custom, and the 
 six-mule team of all our armies in the war of 
 the sixties was and remains a distinctive proof 
 of conditions which gave it birth during the 
 earlier history of the country. When the 
 driver left his near wheel-horse and jerk-line, 
 and mounted the seat in the "schooner," 
 wagon, carriage, etc., handling the pair of reins 
 for each pair of horses, there was the best 
 reason in the world, wholly overlooked by 
 
 writers, that he should sit on the right of the 
 
 78 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 seat as did and does the driver in England, 
 although he did not, as do they pass to the left. 
 This reason is that he might operate the brake 
 with his right hand or right foot. In a hilly 
 country and with ungraded roads, the braking 
 was fully as necessary as the driving. The 
 combined force of all these factors is fully suf- 
 ficient to account for the change in our coun- 
 try's custom from that of England. 
 
 But the most interesting and by all odds the 
 most financially important part of the story still 
 remains, — that concerning the railways. The 
 history of double-tracking in the United States 
 is not yet written. An illustration of what took 
 place on one trunk line, the Union Pacific, is 
 not very different from that on others. This 
 company in constructing its line across Idaho 
 put in sidings one and one half miles long, every 
 three miles, and located these all upon the same 
 side of the track, the object being to utilize 
 these as parts of a second continuous track at 
 a later day. The English rule was of course to 
 pass to the left, as with carriages in the com- 
 mon highways and streets, a rule naturally 
 adopted in Europe, India, etc. In our country 
 there was said to have been sufficiently active 
 
 79 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 political feeling to think that '^what was 
 English was bad," and from the first this made 
 some of the double-track railways righthand 
 passers. I very much doubt this; the right- 
 passing of our common wagons even in revolu- 
 tionary times had become the invariable rule, 
 and so, despite the influence of England, her 
 engineers, etc., the righthand rule in our own 
 railway orders was in the last century usually 
 adopted. We still have three double-track rail- 
 ways which, owing to English habit, having 
 started as left-passers, still continue the prac- 
 tise — the Lake Shore, the Chicago and North- 
 western, and the Great Northern. All others 
 have been righthand roads from the beginning 
 of double-tracking. It is most astonishing to 
 find that any railway in double-tracking should 
 have adopted left-passing, because the engineer 
 sits (or stands) always on the right side of his 
 engine or cab, and uses his left hand on the 
 throttle, observing the signals at his right. In 
 lefthand roads it is plain that he is at a dis- 
 advantage in seeing the signals because of in- 
 tervening trains or cars upon the track at his 
 right. A great element of danger is thus 
 introduced. This may possibly help to account 
 
 80 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 for the existence of two exceptions to the rule 
 in England — one between Charing Cross and 
 Cannon Street in London, and another, one of 
 the first suburban lines run out of London, that 
 formerly known as the Greenwich Railway, 
 from London Bridge to Greenwich. Various 
 explanations have been suggested to explain 
 these exceptions to the rule. 
 
 The danger in lefthand roads of obscured 
 signals by intervening trains must at least com- 
 plicate and make more expensive the working, 
 and it will never be learned how many accidents 
 and wrecks may have been caused by the un- 
 natural method. Even on righthand roads the 
 signal systems alone are now costing more than 
 the entire construction a little while ago. Some 
 50 miles of modern signal systems are being put 
 in by the New York Central Kailway at a cost 
 of $60,000 a mile, or $3,000,000 in all. There 
 are all-controlling reasons why, once estab- 
 lished, a modern lefthand railway can not 
 change to a righthand one, although the disad- 
 vantages of lefthand roads grow amazingly 
 every year. The switches into factories, mills, 
 yards, etc., once established must be kept up, 
 and hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of 
 
 6 81 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 property and vested rights are concerned. A 
 train should enter a switch '' head-on/' and 
 established switches are so designed. 
 
 Incidentally the history of signals is of in- 
 terest. At first watchmen or policemen were 
 stationed along the line as signalmen using 
 white and red flags in the day time, and at night 
 lanterns of the same colors. The signalmen at 
 first stood upon the track, then to one side. The 
 mechanical signals are at present often over- 
 head. When the man was displaced by a me- 
 chanical device it was at first the figure of a 
 man, with body, head, etc., and with two arms 
 rising and falling as did the living man's arms. 
 Then, the signal was vertically cut in two leav- 
 ing the man's half-body, half-head and one arm. 
 That one arm is now in lineal descent repre- 
 sented by the dropping and rising arm of the 
 semaphore signal. A writer in Pall Mall, 1902, 
 thus describes the extension of the signal 
 system : 
 
 However as traffic increased, fixed signals, first of the disc 
 and then of the now universal semaphore pattern, were 
 introduced, and worked by hand — that is, by means of a 
 handle at the foot of the post. The idea of manipulating 
 a cluster of these signals, together with track switches, was 
 
 82 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 suggested by the inventive genius of a lazy Irish porter. 
 The latter had two signals, some distance apart, to attend to ; 
 and in order to save himself the walk, he counterweighted 
 the handle of one, and tied to it a length of clothes-line. 
 Thus while standing at the one he was able to operate the 
 other. An inspector chanced to see the rude though efficient 
 mechanical device, and ordered some expeiiments on the 
 same principle to be carried out in Camden goods yard — 
 for the incident occurred on the North Western Line — with 
 the result that the system of actuating signals from cabins 
 or boxes by means of levers and wires was introduced. The 
 first arrangement of concentrated levers equipped with an 
 interlocking apparatus was invented in 1843. 
 
 The entire question of working a double-track 
 road and its signals, and especially of a left- 
 hand road, depends upon general righthanded- 
 ness, etc., particularly upon righteyedness, and 
 more than all else upon the fact that the driver 
 or locomotive-engineer sits or stands upon the 
 righthand side of his boiler or cab. The factor 
 that has been utterly overlooked, by writers, by 
 railway managers, by everybody connected with 
 or interested in the problem, is that the engineer 
 stands or sits where he does simply and solely 
 because he is a > iyed man. It is all as 
 easily demonstrated as the <^sistence of right- 
 eyedness by the ei ment m^h a pencil : Hold 
 
 83 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 up a card or blotting sheet so that the left eye 
 is covered by it and the right views the scene 
 or landscape; then suddenly move the card so 
 that the right eye is covered by it and the left 
 eye is the used one. At once the whole scene 
 "jumps," intermediate objects are in an en- 
 tirely different relation to those more distant, 
 there is doubt and uncertainty of localization, 
 there is discomfort, and a clear desire and at- 
 tempt to get the right eye into use. Look at 
 moving objects and the troubles are increased; 
 ride in the engineer's cab and they are doubled 
 again ; when sitting on the left side and looking 
 out of the left-side window, it is necessary to 
 put the whole head, that is, the right eye, out, in 
 order to be sure about the approaching objects, 
 signals and their relations. Sit on the right 
 side and at once it is recognized that it is only 
 the right eye that need be put outside the 
 window in order to see correctly and to satisfy 
 the mind. It is most curious and of absorbing 
 interest to see how this fact was slowly, un- 
 consciously, blindly recognized, but without 
 ever being uttered or brought to consciousness 
 in the history of locomotive engine building and 
 early railroading. If you ask any railway 
 
 84 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 official or chief engineer of a modern railway 
 why the engineer sits on the righthand side of 
 his cab, disusing Ms skilled and strong right 
 hand and using the left on the lever of the 
 throttle valve, that lever on which all force and 
 safety depends, and you will be answered by a 
 blank stare of wonder at such a question, or 
 there will be something said about the wagon- 
 driver sitting on the right of the seat, about the 
 use of the strong right hand ready for the ap- 
 plication of brakes, for whistling, for the 
 reversing lever, for bell-ringing, etc. All of 
 which is most wide of the mark. 
 
 In the beginning of engine building, there 
 was no "cab" and even in England to-day there 
 is none ; and also no seat for the engineer to sit 
 upon. He simply looks out in the face of the 
 wind and storm along the righthand side of his 
 boiler, at the track in front of him. The very 
 earliest machines. The Newton, 1680, The Cug- 
 not, 1769, The Murdoch, 1784, The Symington, 
 1786, were directed by the engineer or driver in 
 front of the boiler, and by both hands. But as 
 early as 1790, with The Read, the engineer had 
 learned that he must stand behind his boiler, 
 although the older method of operating from 
 
 85 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the front of the boiler reappeared as late as 
 1803, The Trevicks, in 1821, The Griffith, and 
 even in 1824, The James, etc. In some cases, as 
 in The Killingivorth, 1825, the location of the 
 engineer was doubtful. It is interesting and 
 instructive to watch the struggle from 1790 
 onward between the conflicting unconscious ten- 
 dencies and demands of the righthanded and 
 righteyed engineers (an occasional lefteyed 
 engineer may have obscured and lengthened 
 the progress) and the engine-makers who were 
 still more oblivious of righteyedness. In The 
 Read, of 1790, both hands were used on the 
 throttle and there is no intimation as to right- 
 eyedness or the side of the engine whence the 
 outlook was made. In 1801 in the First Trevicks 
 engine, and in 1803 the Second Trevicks, the 
 throttle lever was held in the right hand, and 
 the engineer looked along the left side of the 
 boiler. In the 1808 Trevicks this was also so, 
 if, as appears from the picture, the right eye 
 looking past the right side of the boiler was the 
 custom. The dominant influence of the rule. 
 In the 1805 Trevicks both hands seem to have 
 been used, and the right hand is steadily shown 
 in The Blankincop, 1812, Stevens' Am eric a, 1S29, 
 
 8G 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Puffing Billy, 1813, Blucher, 1814, Locomotive, 
 1825, Seguin, 1827, Royal George, 1827, Stephen- 
 son's Tivin Sisters, 1827, Hackworcli's Globe, 
 1830, Burg, 1830. In all these, probably or 
 surely, the driver stood upon the left side of 
 the boiler and watched the track in front from 
 his side. He naturally wanted to use the right 
 hand as the throttle-hand, and had not yet dis- 
 covered the ocular problem. From 1829, with 
 The Rocket, The CosteMo, 1831, The Lafayette, 
 1837, The Hector, 1839, Hinhley's Lion, Gooch's 
 Great Western and all subsequent machines, the 
 necessity of looking with the right eye along the 
 righthand side of the boiler at the track and 
 signals, became dominant, and dictated the 
 placing and direction of the throttle-valve 
 handle. With the late construction of the 
 ^^cab" of the driver, the needs of the right eye 
 were accentuated because the engineer in look- 
 ing out of the window at his right hand is com- 
 pelled to put no more than his right eye out of 
 the cab-window. If he put the left eye out of 
 the left-side window he would have to put the 
 entire head out in order to see with the right 
 eye. Thus righteyedness has unconsciously 
 compelled the driver to disuse the right hand 
 
 87 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 for the naturally expert work with the throttle- 
 valve, in order that the greater danger may be 
 avoided that would follow both to engineer and 
 to his train, from putting the whole head out 
 of the left window of the cab. 
 
 Among the many ocular problems of railway 
 employees those relating to deficient color- 
 jDerception are of great importance, but equally 
 great are those regarding presbyopia or the 
 failure of visual acuteness after 40 or 45 years 
 of age, and especially should the diagnosis of 
 righteyedness or lefteyedness be held of prime 
 necessity. The left hand may be allowed, some- 
 what against nature, to manage the throttle- 
 lever, but the right eye must be the absolute 
 judge of signals, etc. Undoubtedly there are a 
 few hundred, at least, of lefteyed engineers, 
 signal men, etc., on our roads, and their dis- 
 ability for their jDCculiar calling is gi^eatly 
 endangering lives and property. Nor should it 
 be forgotten that there are generally jDropor- 
 tionally more lefteyed than lefthanded men. As 
 trolley-car *'gripmen" or engineers, chauffeurs 
 of automobiles, etc., the lefteyed are at only a 
 slight disadvantage because nothing is in front 
 of their eyes to impede the dominant function 
 
 88 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 of the right eye. Despite this fact the automo- 
 bile cliauffeur sits on the righthand seat, not 
 only because of inherited custom, but again that 
 his right eye may have the slight advantage of 
 position and that his right hand may be free to 
 use in almost every instant's emergency. In 
 our trolley cars and electric locomotives the all- 
 important brake is operated with the right 
 hand. 
 
 To epitomize, the resolution of the mysteries 
 as to the origin of righthandedness and the rule 
 of the road may be made only by grasping the 
 phenomena as a whole, i.e., by massing the facts 
 of the entire history from prehistoric savage 
 battle and barter to the expert locomotive- 
 engineer of to-day running a '' limited" train at 
 the rate of a mile or more a minute on a two- 
 track or four-track railway. Even the cave 
 men show that righthandedness was the rule in 
 their time, and spear-hand, shield-hand, ges- 
 ture-language, digital-counting, and the tally- 
 stick, the world over, fixed the speech and 
 writing and righthand brain- centers in the left 
 half-brain — and, of course, those of the left 
 hand and fingers in the right half -brain. War 
 made up the life and set all the fashions of 
 
 89 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 beginning civilization, and war together with 
 narrow streets established the custom of right- 
 hand passing, for walkers, riders of horses, 
 asses, mules, etc., and for drivers of all vehicles, 
 and for vessels. For walkers and vessels no 
 people ever changed the custom, but especially 
 the English, while preserving righthand pass- 
 ing in foot-passengers and on the sea, anoma- 
 lously developed lefthand passing for vehicles, 
 and the same, of course for double-track rail- 
 roads. What everybody has failed to see is 
 that righthandedness is necessarily bound up 
 with rightfootedness and righteyedness, be- 
 cause all closely united functions of the body 
 must be correlated and their centers of motion 
 located in contiguity and upon one side of the 
 brain, in order to make effectual and rapid all 
 responses of the organism to circmnstance or 
 environment. This works toward a necessary 
 and desirable differentiation of function that 
 makes the aims of the "ambidexterity" sillies 
 more than resultless and foolish. Because 
 whenever a center or congress of centers is 
 developed in one half -brain, disuse and transfer 
 to the other half is, according to age, either im- 
 possible, faulty, handicapping, or disease- 
 
 90 
 
THE RULE OF THE ROAD 
 
 producing. Co-ordinated functions of tlie body 
 require co-ordinated and contiguous nerve-cen- 
 ters u]3on the same side of the brain, at least so 
 far as is possible. If one or two dextral factors 
 are in opposite cerebral hemispheres, respon- 
 sive and quickly-acting co-ordinated functions 
 will be slower and more inaccurate than if on a 
 single side. The English lefthand passing of 
 vehicles is probably due to the influence of the 
 single-hand fights on foot, tourneyings and 
 joustings of horseback-riders, in which meeting 
 and passing to the left was inevitable. The 
 custom grew and continued directly into that 
 of the wagon-drivers. In the United States 
 there was a reversion to the righthand passing 
 of vehicles, because of the abeyance of lefthand 
 passing of vehicles, and of vehicles themselves, 
 for so long, with growth of the natural right- 
 hand passing by walkers, horseback-riders, ox- 
 teams, and wagons with drivers on the near- 
 wheel horse, such as is found in the later 
 prairie-schooner, and six-mule army-wagon. 
 Three double-track railways in the United States 
 still pass their trains to the left, an absurd and 
 bad custom, expensive and productive of 
 wrecks. But despite this the engineer sits upon 
 
 91 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the right of his cab, because he can in this place 
 better observe the track and signals in front and 
 to his right, and with the dominant right eye 
 only outside of the cab-window, whereas, if sit- 
 ting on the left, he would be compelled to put 
 the entire head out in order to see with the 
 right eye, and, even then, because of the boiler, 
 not so well. Only righteyedness will explain 
 the long, doubtful, and varying custom in 
 engine-building as to the position of the 
 engineer in the beginning of history of railway 
 construction and signaling. 
 
 92 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 STUDY OF A CASE OF TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS 
 
 WRITING.* 
 
 Supposing the tale to have been true, Newton, 
 I believe, would never have discovered the law 
 of gravitation if the individual apple had fallen 
 on his shoulder instead of on his nose, or if it 
 had not been peculiarly colored, if it had not 
 been blown by an odd gust of wind, or if the 
 philosopher had not turned his ankle that morn- 
 ing, etc. Something individual is needed to 
 bring truth to recog-nition, and the greater the 
 number of the idiosyncratic elements the more 
 speedily and accurately, probably, will the 
 abstract principle or general law come to light. 
 Generalizing over a lot of malobserved and 
 colorless facts gets us ^'no torrarder." Being 
 and nonbeing are indeed one, but what kind of a 
 ''one," and how useless is such "being," and 
 such ''nonbeing"! One swallow may make a 
 summer if a good ornithologist is the observer 
 of the migrating bird. In medicine all wise 
 
 * The Medical Pvecord, Xovember 2, 1907. 
 
 93 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 physicians know there is no " typical case, ' ' and 
 that one instance of any common disease 
 studied thoroughly to the bottom, in all its rela- 
 tions and details, is worth more than a hundred 
 glanced at, worth more than all the glittering 
 generalities of the text-books, worth more to the 
 doctor as well as to the patient. The same 
 truth, is it not applicable to physiology, to 
 neurology, and even to psychology? For ex- 
 ample: A patient, aged 52, upon whom rests 
 heavy responsibilities, a highly trained civil 
 engineer, cannot think and write at the same 
 time. He can dictate to a stenographer 
 thoughtful and planning letters, but to write the 
 simplest business or even social letter requiring 
 any intellectual attention or phrasing is abso- 
 lutely impossible. He is under the necessity, 
 therefore, in travel and at home, of having a 
 stenographer about in order that he may answer 
 letters, describe and attend to his work, etc. 
 As a child, he was tortured for years to make 
 him write with his right hand. The natural 
 writing-center in the right cerebral hemisphere 
 was thus rendered atrophic, crippled, or un- 
 usable, and the artificially stimulated mechan- 
 
 94 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 ism in the left side of the brain could never be 
 made to work correctly or easily by the other 
 intellectual organs during the instant in which 
 they had their own tasks to perform. 
 
 Another patient, a beautiful but sickly and 
 also morbid-minded girl, never could go into 
 society, to balls, dinners, etc., because she could 
 never act naturally, dance, use the knife and 
 fork unconsciously, or in any definite fashion; 
 her eyes, brain, and body had been confused, 
 made awkward and sickly, and her life had 
 become a strange tragedy. The "ambidextral" 
 tyrants had taken away from her, when a child, 
 her natural lefthandedness ; they had not made 
 her righthanded; she could never, expertly or 
 promptly, do the task or purpose desired ; they 
 had also given her lateral curvature of the spine 
 and life-long indescribable misery. 
 
 In still another patient, although the tragical 
 aspect had not been so noteworthy, there was 
 found abundant interest in details. She is now 
 lefthanded for all except writing. She also 
 cannot write and think at the same time ; indeed, 
 she positively ''hates to write," and must also 
 dictate to a stenographer a simple description 
 
 95 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 of her symptoms. She is a highly capable and 
 educated woman, a famous teacher, and con- 
 stantly addresses large audiences on pedagogical 
 subjects with ease — except in regard to certain 
 ''slips of the tongue." She frequently trans- 
 poses words and even parts of words when 
 speaking, immediately becoming conscious of 
 the error and correcting it promptly. These 
 transpositions began at the age of 13, after long 
 and severe training (''with great agony"), had 
 forced her to disuse the left hand for writing; 
 she began asking for, or speaking of "mish and 
 filk," for instance, instead of "milk and fish." 
 Words with an opposite meaning are still used, 
 as ivarm instead of cooL "West bay" instead 
 of the intended "best way" will be uttered. If 
 she has something in each hand she will lay 
 down the wrong one, or throw that she wishes 
 to keep in the waste-basket. The greater the 
 general fatigue the more frequent such mis- 
 takes. Each eye is equally dominant, i.e., the 
 pencil throws two equally-clear images on the 
 wall. At about the age of 17 she discovered 
 that she could write with either hand, and syn- 
 chronously with both, normal, or mirror-style, 
 with one or with the other, etc. I append a 
 
 96 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 series made recently to illustrate (pp. 128- 
 145).* 
 
 In order to get a clear understanding of the 
 teachings of the case I report, and of other 
 similar ones, one must hold in mind several 
 facts, and the most important is that there is 
 no adequate knowledge of the significance of a 
 biologic structure except historically. Sec- 
 ondly there is no history so exact and so 
 illuminating as that given in the most compre- 
 hensive of all biologic laws, ''the ontogeny.' 
 repeats the phylogeny." That sentence is the 
 master-key of almost all the mysteries of living 
 things. The statical or anatomical phasing 
 gets its explanation only through physiology, 
 becomes clear only genetically. All pathology 
 is in origin nothing more than aberrant and 
 morbid physiology, and all organic structure is 
 the product of precedent and repetitive func- 
 tion. There is no "pod" without a preceding 
 pseudopod. Instead of the common scientific 
 
 * In all such bimanual writing it is to be noted that the 
 pens were placed on the lineless blank sheets with gaze and 
 attention, although the movements were subsequently executed 
 without these guides. The spacial and topographic accuracy 
 were thus better than would have been true under other 
 conditions. 
 
 7 97 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 nonsense that there is no inheritance of 
 acquired characteristics, the truth is that there 
 can be no inheritance of any characteristics ex- 
 \\cept acquired ones. To come to details, the 
 eye as an organic structure appears defined 
 within a month after conception; the differ- 
 entiation of muscular tissue only at five months ; 
 righthandedness (or lefthandedness), however, 
 commences to appear only fourteen months 
 after conception, i.e., about five months after 
 birth. If, therefore, the individual organism 
 epitomizes and illustrates the history of all the 
 ancestry, there are certain psychological and 
 metaphysical conclusions which no monistic or 
 other materialistic logic can escape. Em- 
 bryologically, the eye is an extension of the 
 brain ; the brain comes out to see. It is not so 
 of any other organ of the body. The eye pre- 
 cedes the appearance of muscular tissue by 
 some four months ; the inference is unavoidable 
 that the perfection of visual function long ante- 
 dates and conditions free motility, which is 
 itself the condition of the existence of all higher 
 organisms. Uhi motus, ihi visus est. That is 
 the greatest of the Darwinian factors, strangely 
 
 ignored by all Darwins, governing the survival 
 
 9$ 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 of the fit and the exclusion of the unfit. A fore- 
 seeing and purposive planning of the meeheLn- 
 ism of vision, and of motility, is thus evident, 
 and there cannot be foresight and plan except 
 there is a foreseer and a planner. Mentality, 
 therefore, preceded and created structure. The 
 mind, the life, the brain, the eye, made their 
 tools. 
 
 Again, the appearance of slight righthanded- 
 ness is five months after birth, and its per- 
 fectibility goes on throughout life. This par- 
 ticular differentiation of function is dependent 
 upon attention, and is a matter of education. 
 But there can be no attention without an at- 
 tender. In sensation-making, in conscious 
 willing to act, in choosing to use one hand 
 rather than the other, we reach beyond the limit 
 of automatonism or of mechanism per se, and 
 come to the hand upon the lever of the engine, 
 i.e., upon the something beyond the machine — 
 in a word, upon the metaphysical. If there is a 
 control of force, called attention, that can be 
 transferred from one side of the brain at will, 
 and markedly change the functions of one side 
 or the other, then there is something outside of 
 and above the individual mechanisms and cen- 
 
 99 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ters which is not a part of them, and which 
 uses them as tools. A player on the piano is 
 something different from the piano itself. The 
 player upon the cerebral piano transfers his 
 attention to one side or other of the keyboard 
 of the brain. The fact of attention, transferred 
 at will to one part or another, and choosing at 
 pleasure not only the music to play, but the 
 parts of the keyboard on which to play, playing 
 better with one hand or the other — all this 
 demonstrates that there is a mechanism, a 
 material, neurological mechanism, but also that 
 the player is something other and different, 
 placed over it, a mental somewhat not bound up 
 with it, not explainable as the action of the 
 nervous system per se, but using that mechan- 
 ism as an instrument. The psychology that is 
 monistic, that denies life, that denies the funda- 
 mental distinction and existence of a machine 
 and a machinist, is ah initio unscientific. 
 
 Moreover, cerebral tumors and traumatisms 
 and physiological experiment have absolutely 
 proved that the adult, central, or cerebral mech- 
 anisms of memory, of language, of writing, of 
 speech, etc., are located in one side of the brain, 
 that opposite the writing hand. In the right- 
 
 100 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 handed tlie left half-brain is therefore pre- 
 eminently the seat of the mind. The mechanisms 
 that give the man external validity, that 
 intermediate him with useful objectivity, are 
 one-sided. But this one-sided differentiation is 
 acquired, and is subject to progressive perfec- 
 tion throughout life. The machine is becoming 
 more and more perfect. Dividing the machine 
 in two parts of the brain is degradation, is 
 against progress, and the inevitable differentia- 
 tion of function. " Ambidexterity "-mongering 
 is the most absurd silliness. 
 
 Note that there is no discoverable difference 
 of microscopic structure between the corre- 
 sponding unused brain-tissue on one side, and 
 that in the cerebral speech-center much used 
 on the other. And note again that the choice 
 is open to the attention or will to elect in infancy 
 either side to work from, and thus to make the 
 individual either righthanded or lefthanded. 
 Observe also that as about 96 percent of people 
 now are righthanded, the supposed "laws of 
 heredity" are put utterly out of court so far as 
 pertains to the number of the lefthanded. Every 
 lefthanded person must have had millions of 
 righthanded ancestors for every one that was 
 lefthanded. 
 
 101 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 • Not to be omitted, too, is that with all the 
 actual or possible education of the left cerebral 
 center in the righthanded (or of the right in 
 the lefthanded), there is a poorly co-operating 
 observing or reversing, or mirroring mechan- 
 ism of the other side which can be brought into 
 use by the attention. The psyche is, therefore, 
 again demonstrated to be something more than 
 the mechanism. It plays at will upon the 
 mechanism. It plays badly, if you please, but 
 the mechanism does not play itself ! Attention 
 is merely the name we give the metaphysical 
 player, the cerebral engine cannot run itself, or 
 the piano play itself any more than could the 
 locomotive or the musical machine. In depriv- 
 ing one hand or one center of the attention, we 
 make the other an automatic "trailer" (as I 
 have called it), working by means of the com- 
 missural fibers between the two oppositely- 
 placed centers, but working badly, largely with- 
 out the sense of direction, form, topograph}^, 
 etc. The attention, therefore, adds all-import- 
 ant elements to the mechanism. Psychology 
 can no longer ignore pathology, or aberrant 
 phj'siology. 
 
 Now, what is this "Attention"? As before, 
 
 102 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 the question can be answered only genetically. 
 The brain comes out to see, but only succeeds in 
 really seeing with some comparative degree of 
 accuracy at about five or six months after birth. 
 And this is precisely the date at which right- 
 handedness, or the reverse^, appears. In about 
 96 percent of infants the right eye is the better- 
 seeing eye, and thus compels the right hand to 
 work with it. Thus, vision is the father of 
 action, of righthanded action, and righteyedness 
 is bound up as a precedent, synchronous, and 
 causal factor of righthandedness. The writing 
 illustrations to be given show that spacial rela- 
 tions are created and definitized by ''ocular 
 attention." Direction, location, measurement — 
 all topographical factors, are thus products of 
 vision. But a secondary product has been 
 evolved, its working illustrated in the writing 
 illustrations, which may be called psychic or 
 mental attention. It is plainly a derivative or 
 product of ocular attention because it can only 
 exist separately when the visual attention is 
 not upon a (usually) moving object. With the 
 eye closed it may be brought into existence, 
 but its derivative nature is again evidenced by 
 its imperfection of work, the lack of direction, 
 
 103 
 
 y 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 of accuracy of topographical qualities, etc. 
 With the active vision renounced, it may even 
 be turned upon sensations not visually derived, 
 such as of sounds, odors, tastes, etc., but all 
 sounds at least are topographical and direc- 
 tional ; pain and touch are of the localized parts 
 of the body, or again spacial in nature, and even 
 taste is located in the mouth. The brain did 
 not make out of its own substance the periph- 
 eral organs of hearing, taste, touch, etc.; the 
 eye alone is brain-substance told off to a special 
 mental and cerebral duty which was prevented 
 by a nontransparent skull. 
 
 The execution of a compositely-formed re- 
 solve requiring first of all vision, then possibly 
 other sensational stimuli, but always memory, 
 i.e., the stored results of all previous co-ordi- 
 nated activities, words, speech, etc., can issue in 
 swift and decisive act only through the placing 
 of all the most directly intermediating cerebral 
 centers in the closest possible contigTiity in one 
 side of the brain. If one is righthanded his 
 centers for writing, speech, and memory must 
 be on the left side. Upon the same side, there- 
 fore, must be the visual and other centers which 
 furnish the chief data for the compositely- 
 
 104 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 formed act. If one or more important data 
 must come from centers in the opposite half- 
 brain, delay at least must ensue, and other 
 doubts and inaccuracies also. Hence the all- 
 necessary concentrations of the chief organs 
 and functions in one side of the brain. The 
 organist plays on several banks of keys, and 
 with pedals, uses scores of stops, reads five 
 staffs of music, etc., that is, he really plays on 
 many organs at once. But his banks of keys 
 and stops must not be located on different sides 
 of the church, or even beyond the reach of his 
 arms. The two cerebral cortical hemispheres 
 are indeed somewhat connected by commissural 
 fibers, but poorly so at best, as our trailing 
 handwriting shows. Biologically, the safety 
 and success of the human organism has always 
 dei^ended upon the most intimate, accurate, and 
 swift co-ordination of many factors and cortical 
 centers in order to issue in resolve and action. 
 Such co-ordination could not take place if the 
 cortical centers furnishing the necessary data 
 for action were divided equally between the two 
 cerebral hemispheres. 
 
 The difficulty of understanding the nature 
 and origin of mirror- writing has come from the 
 
 105 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 fact of looking at it as tlie result first of a 
 pathological state of mind or nerve action, and 
 secondly as the work of a finished or completed 
 mechanism. Pathology has nothing to do with 
 the matter ; it is physiological and natural, due 
 to the action and degree of attention, and it is 
 also a product of education, habit, or develop- 
 ment. Soltmann, Erlenmeyer, Marinesco, Sol- 
 lier, and others look upon it as a pathological, 
 and as a finished and presented fact. Others, 
 Buchwald, Durand, Vogt, Nicolle and Hali- 
 pre, Meige, Bernard, Ballet, Figuera, etc., 
 hold it to be normal of the left hand in the 
 righthanded, sometimes even in the lefthanded. 
 In 77 deaf mutes Soltmann found 35 percent 
 wrote mirror-style with the left, and he con- 
 cludes that "the more educated the person the 
 less he will fall into mirror- writing with the left 
 hand." This is the reverse of the truth, and 
 nothing is said as to the fundamental condition 
 — the fact of precedent lefthandedness, either 
 continued or overcome, and of mixed types. 
 
 A simple device would have put all such 
 errors to rout and would have shown the truth. 
 The difficulty in writing in the manner habit- 
 ually chosen is forgotten; it is an art, slowly 
 
 106 
 
 I 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 and laboriouslj' acquired, and always poorly 
 executed, tliis writing on a table or a flat sur- 
 face in front, and with the body craned to the 
 left to see with the right eye the writing which 
 is being executed. (By the left eye in the left- 
 handed, of course.) And also there is a univer- 
 sal neglect of the direction in which the hand is 
 commanded to write. If one writes mirror-style 
 he must write towards the body with the right 
 hand, and away from it with the left. This is 
 demonstrated by the plan here proposed : Place 
 the surface upon which the writing is to be done 
 upright — a solidly fixed sheet of plate-glass is 
 best — the edge at right angles to the face and 
 almost against the nose and forehead; attach 
 sheets of quadrille paper upon either side by 
 clamps. Thus is avoided the great difficulties 
 the imagination and eyes have in projecting 
 outward the image or seeing the writing which 
 is being executed. The skewed, indirect, absurd- 
 angled, reversed, and illogical writing posture 
 is avoided, and the upright sheet of glass is as 
 if the two-sided mirror were placed between 
 the two cerebral halves. The writer should be 
 one innocent of all such experiments, i.e., not 
 used to put his educated consciousness or atten- 
 
 107 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tion through any ''tricks" or tasks; a pencil 
 should be in each hand, the points on the sides 
 opposite to each other. Neither eye can now be 
 used if the pencils are started within a few 
 inches of the eyes, so that the eyes may be 
 closed, and the experiments will be all the better 
 for the free working of the attention on the 
 surfaces directly in front of the eyes. Syn- 
 chronous writing under these circumstances 
 will, in the righthanded, always show normal 
 style with the right hand, and mirror-style with 
 the left — or the reverse in the case of the un- 
 tampered-with lefthanded. Fix the attention 
 of the righthanded upon his lefthand writing, 
 and command it to write normal, and compel the 
 right to make some movements; it will make 
 attempts at least, at mirror-style. The higher 
 the expertness and mental culture the more 
 certain will be such results. On the table 
 before us vision, and that imagined vision we 
 call central attention (with peripheral vision 
 abrogated), controls or tries to control, but has 
 so many difficulties that it has falsified aijd 
 confused all experimentation. The left tries to 
 write as does the right. My device removes 
 confusing factors and conditions, and proves 
 
 108 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 that everybody normally writes mirror-style 
 with the trailing-hand, but dependent upon the 
 all-controlling factor of the direction of the 
 writing, and upon general education, imagina- 
 tiveness, skill, habit, the development of central 
 attention, etc. Sign-language, warfare, etc., 
 first originated the habit of righteyedness and 
 so of its resultant righthandedness, and this 
 necessitated the location of the speech-center in 
 the left half-brain. The particular incidence, 
 now, in a certain child, of righthandedness or 
 lefthandedness, depends upon which is the 
 better seeing eye, when arm-and-hand motion 
 arise and are co-ordinated with the function of 
 the precedent and governing eye. Heredity has 
 nothing to do with the matter directly, and only 
 indirectly, in making the right eye the better 
 seeing eye in infancy, and when the habit is 
 established. In about 96 percent the right is 
 the better seeing eye. If it is desired to make 
 a lefthanded babe normally righthanded, the 
 process must be begun in the earliest stages, 
 and by means of giving the right eye the better 
 function. This may now be held impossible, 
 although atropine in the left eye of the child 
 with beginning lefthandedness might possibly 
 
 109 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 be efficacious. Lei no one attempt it! Pathology 
 follows almost inevitably any interference with 
 Nature's institution of handedness, right or 
 left, however early it may have begun. For the 
 mixed type is far worse, and usually ends in 
 more suffering than if lefthandedness were of 
 the pure type. 
 
 In two-handed mirror-writing, and in the 
 work of the trailing-hand, there is more than a 
 suggestive hint, there is an intimate glance per- 
 mitted into the mechanics of the construction 
 or connections of the two-sided brain. It also 
 comes out in the often-described experiment of 
 writing with one, and then with the other hand 
 upon paper while looking at the figure being 
 made in a mirror set at right angles vertically 
 in front. In a righthanded person the making 
 of a square or triangle with the dextral hand 
 is possible and comparatively easy, but on 
 attempting the same trick with the sinistral 
 hand, without forethought and quickly, the di- 
 rection will be ludicrously reversed. Now, 
 synchronous two-handed writing, by the right- 
 handed, is easier and more conunonly possible 
 if the left writes mirror-style and the other 
 normal style. The commissural fibers, the 
 
 110 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 pattern-making threads, between the two op- 
 posed cerebral mechanisms, let us say between 
 the two patterned or figured cloths, seem there- 
 fore to run from the ''face," or "right" side 
 of one, to the "back," "wrong," or "seamy" 
 side of the other. Changing the analogy to 
 that of two mirrors, the face of the mirror on 
 one side of the brain reflects and normalizes the 
 figure of the obverse or back side of the mirror 
 on the opposite side of the brain. The mirror 
 or cloth erected in the left-brain of the right- 
 handed fronts consciousness and its figures are 
 normal, while that in the trailing side is mirror- 
 writing, or is the "seamy," "wrong" side of 
 the cloth. In reference to the eyes, besides the 
 evident facts termed righteyedness and left- 
 eyedness, one of an equal or greater importance 
 comes into view which I have called dominance. 
 Usually and normally a righthanded person is 
 righteyed, and a lefthanded one is lefteyed. 
 That is, the right eye is normally the dominant 
 one in the righthanded, and the left eye in the 
 lefthanded. A simple test, one of many of domi- 
 nancy, is easily made and thoroughly convinc- 
 ing. Hold the pencil or finger upright a foot 
 
 from the eyes in the median line and observe the 
 
 111 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 image it makes on the opposite wall ; closing the 
 left eye results in no movement of the image on 
 the wall, but closing the right or dominant eye 
 throws the left eye into hitherto disused or non- 
 selected function, and the image "jmnps" sud- 
 denly to the right. The demonstration of the 
 dominancy of the right is thus apparent; the 
 mind must not be confused in action by two dif- 
 ferently-placed images, and has learned to ignore 
 the one and rely upon the other. And it ignores 
 the least reliable and least accurate or useful 
 image, which is the left in the dextral. Cor- 
 respondingly, of course, the choice is reversed 
 in the lefthanded person. And it is as evident 
 that a high degree of ametropia, squint, ambly- 
 opia, or other disease, of the naturally domi- 
 nant eye, would transfer the dominancy to the 
 eye of the other side. In such cases the mind 
 and entire organism is morbidized, decision and 
 action are confused, delayed or inhibited re- 
 flexes are necessitated, stuttering and halting 
 speech or thought appears, etc. This is because 
 the right eye of the four-footed animalian 
 phylum has controlled the motion and placing 
 of the right front foot, guarded the right side 
 of the body, etc., and primarily established the 
 
 112 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 great law that co-operating cerebral centers 
 must be in the same cerebral hemisphere to 
 render decision and action the most exact and 
 quick. Contiguity of these centers insures 
 accuracy and celerity, while the location of one 
 or more centers in the opposite hemisphere 
 demands the intermediation of commissural 
 nerves between the two halves, with which 
 pathology arises. These morbid results are 
 painfully evident in the sudden loss in adult 
 life, of^the dominant eye, or the more expert 
 hand. To the observant they are equally evi- 
 dent in those naturally and healthily lefthanded 
 persons made morbid by the morbid ''ambi- 
 dexterity" sillies. These persons put Nature 
 to the foolish task of creating a second set of 
 subdominant or equidominant cerebral centers 
 where, according to God and common sense, 
 one was not only sufficient, but infinitely better. 
 In such cases the dominancy of one eye is done 
 away with and an equidominance or alternate 
 dominance is established. Two images of the 
 pencil on the wall are seen, and neither is 
 unconsciously to be ignored. 
 
 Almost the sole method and means by which 
 we come into large and intellectual relations 
 
 8 113 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 I with the world are the results of vision. The 
 /total contributions of all the other senses com- 
 pose but a fractional part of the ocular ones. 
 Intellect itself is little more than epitomized 
 ancestral visual experience. Nearly all our 
 thinking is in images, pictures of things seen, 
 and even the most scientific, even the most 
 abstract and metaphysical intellectual processes 
 are only seemingly amorphous; they are really 
 like the crystalline coal-measures of ancestral 
 and personal visual experiences. The difficulty 
 is to draw the line between the inherited and the 
 individual parts. The " tabula rasa'' of the 
 infant mind is by no means blank, but its in- 
 heritances are necessarily abstract, and are 
 vivified and definitized by the daily millionfold 
 personal, i.e., chiefly retinal, images poured 
 among the ancestral carbon strata awaiting the 
 touch of reality to awaken them to living light 
 and heat. A truer analogy presents in lan- 
 guage, the fused and packed epitome and record, 
 the composite photogTaph, in fact, of racial ex- 
 perience. Nearer far to his personality than 
 any other or all other products of Man's being 
 here, the most immaterial, most spiritual record 
 of his existence, is his language. And lan- 
 
 114 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 guages are almost wholly the records of things 
 seen. The greatest deed of mankind is the 
 creation of the alphabet; so arduous was it 
 in fact that only one alphabet has been evolved 
 in and for the whole world. All are at one in 
 the conclusion that this alphabet is the sine 
 qua non of intellectual development and of the 
 condition we call civilization. Well, the alpha- 
 bet, as all know, is made up of the convention- 
 alized pictures, ideographs, eye-made images 
 and photographs of objective scenes and things. 
 The seeing of things correctly is the foundation 
 and condition of knowing things rightly and 
 truly — i.e., of civilized living and scientific think- 
 ing. Conversely, the seeing things badly and 
 distortedly, i.e., ametropically and with optic 
 morbidity, is the source to-day of more suffer- 
 ing and improper living than all other patho- 
 genetic factors combined. In all past time the 
 composite of millions of ancestral visual experi- 
 ences have been forming what we call mind, 
 intellect, and memory. The elimination of the 
 visually unfit has made the present-day heir of 
 all the ages the product of predominatingly and 
 relatively perfect eyes. Civilization adds an 
 amazing acuteness to the present tragedy when 
 
 115 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 an ametropic organism comes in bitterest per- 
 sonal clash with the inherited datum of all past 
 experience. ''Eyestrain" is thus usually the 
 greatest misfortune which can happen to a civil- 
 ized ''near- worker." It morbidizes mind and 
 body and is wrecking numberless lives all about 
 us. Some day medicine will be aroused to the 
 amazing reach of this awful truth, and in that 
 day medicine, and especially psychiatry and 
 neuropathology, will be revolutionized. 
 
 One may go further and say that not only is 
 human life and civilization itself the quint- 
 essence of summarized visual experience, but 
 the very development and evolution of biolo- 
 gical forms above the lowest has been depen- 
 dent upon vision. Ubi motus ibi visus est is the 
 key of most higher organic evolution. Food and 
 defense have always depended upon vision and 
 perfection of vision, and the development of 
 more perfect vision has been the forerunning 
 means of the production of more perfect forms. 
 The Darwinian exclusion of the unfit has been 
 largely the exclusion of the visually unfit, and 
 the survival of the fittest has been the survival 
 of those possessing the best ocular mechanism. 
 No task in organofaction has been so difficult of 
 
 IIG 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 acliievement and of healthy preservation as that 
 of making the most perfect ocular mechanism. 
 One of the most inscrutable and important 
 powers of the psyche is attention, but is it not 
 almost entirely a product of visual function? 
 In the congenitally blind and exaggeratedly 
 ametropic the same truth comes to clearness. 
 The inherited or epitomized experiences of the 
 ancestry have operated in them, and in all of 
 us, to beget the secondary and acquired kind of 
 attention which we have in varying degree, and 
 which may be called mental, intellectual, or 
 central — that coming to view with deprivation 
 of visual attention. It is inaccurate and im- 
 perfect, especially topographically, as our 
 illustrations, even from a highly cultivated 
 mind, show. The fundamental distinction has 
 not been emphasized that visual attention de- 
 pends largely and chiefly upon the following 
 of the objectively moving thing with the eyes, 
 or what amounts to the same thing, upon move- 
 ments of the eyes to re-establish sensitiveness 
 of the retina. Absolutely persistent gazing at an 
 immovable point quickly results in inability to 
 see it. The moving object rivets the attention, 
 and so long as it is visually fixed mental or 
 
 117 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 central attention and visual attention are fused 
 into unity. There is no possibility, except pos- 
 sibly by training, of attentively observing a 
 moving thing like the pen-point or the letters 
 being made by it, while at the same time mutu- 
 ally and continuously attentive to another train 
 of thought, memory, or objective happening. 
 The bimanual writer may write the same letters 
 and words synchronously, but not different 
 words. This is simply because the eye cannot 
 see different words being written. As all stu- 
 dents have agreed, consciousness or attention 
 is like a simple stream of sand passing through 
 the constricted part of the hour-glass. The at- 
 tention of an expert organ player, playing with 
 feet, two hands, pulling stops, reading several 
 lines of notes, varying the expression, etc., each 
 second, seems almost to contradict the validity 
 of the hour-glass comparison. It appears to be 
 a widely spread-out rain of attention, different 
 from the more primitive and naive or hour- 
 glass kind of the rest of us. But even this is 
 due, I believe, to an acquired ability of perceiv- 
 ing and acting upon the perimacular and more 
 peripherally placed images of the retina. Most 
 of us actually use and attend to the macular 
 
 118 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 image, and the retina beyond is used only to 
 call the attention of the eyes to an object not 
 really or perfectly visualized and perceived, but 
 which by ocular motion is at once brought upon 
 the macula and then clearly perceived. Watch- 
 ing an organ-player read and play new music 
 shows one that he has a staring and indefinite 
 expression, which argues a large field of vision 
 and attention, filled with many objects, all held 
 in a synchronous, graded, and differing clear- 
 ness of attention, impossible to do except after 
 long education and practice. And this exten- 
 sion of visual attention to the images of the 
 notes, keys, etc., located farther and farther 
 beyond the macula, requires that they shall be 
 visually and essentially correlated. The broad- 
 ening of attention to multiple objects, the hold- 
 ing in synchronous unity seemingly discrete 
 streams of objects and influences, seems, there- 
 fore, a matter of education, not of primary 
 endowment, of progressive development and 
 widening, instead of abrogation of the single- 
 current, and depends primarily and wholly upon 
 the ocular extension of the synchronous recog- 
 nizability of correlated images falling farther 
 than usual beyond the macula. 
 
 119 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 The visual central (or mental) attention is 
 separable from the peripheral visual attention 
 only when peripheral visual attention is abro- 
 gated. That this central attention is derived 
 from the visual, is its pale, possibly ludicrously 
 inexact reflex, is apparent, even without the 
 striking demonstrations shown in the writing 
 illustrations given herewith. It is essentially 
 of the nature of a 2ns aller, reminding one of the 
 pathetic almost incoherent falsetto of the ac- 
 quired speech of the deaf mute. By long culti- 
 vation it gains precision in the mind of the 
 orator, musician, etc., but the extramacular 
 education of the retinas lies at the foundation 
 of the proficiency. 
 
 The origin of righthandedness and lefthand- 
 edness I have elsewhere set forth in detail, but 
 must here epitomize. There is no reason to 
 suspect even the most vague or far-away begin- 
 nings in animals. So long as the four feet are 
 used for locomotion there could be no lateral 
 differentiation of function. I have watched for 
 it in squirrels that use their front paws to hold 
 nuts, cats that strike at insects in the air, or 
 play with wounded mice, and in many other 
 
 animals, but I am sure that to neither paw is 
 
 120 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 preference assigned. There is thus probably 
 no dominancy of either eye in animals. Even 
 in the monkeys and gorillas, who of all animals 
 most use the forepaws as hands, one catches no 
 suggestion of preferential use or superior ex- 
 pertness in the dextral or sinistral side. (My 
 very intelligent dog, trained to ' ' shake hands ' ' 
 with his right paw, lost his right eye, and after 
 that he always offered the left paw.) But in 
 the lowest human savages all over the world 
 choice or greater expertness of one hand is as 
 clearly present as in civilized races. No sav- 
 ages, however, are so near animalian conditions 
 as to exhibit its differentiating origins. Fixed 
 in all our military and social customs, and living 
 at the base of language itself are two facts 
 which solve the riddle and make clear whence 
 and how righthandedness arose. In all tribes 
 and countries since man used implements of 
 offense and defence, the sinistral or cardiac side 
 was protected by the shield and the sinistral 
 hand was called the shield-hand, as the dextral 
 was called the spear-hand. Next to fighting 
 and synchronous with it was the need of barter, 
 and the fundamental condition of bartering was 
 counting with the low numbers, one to ten. The 
 
 121 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 fingers of the free or dextral liand were of 
 course first used, and all fingers are to-day 
 called digits, as are the figures themselves, and 
 the basis of our numberings is the decimal or 
 ten-fingered system. The tally-stick, notched 
 or numbered, is the record of the digits held in 
 the air. Every drill and action of the soldier 
 from Xenophon to West Point is dextral in 
 every detail. The dominancy of the right eye 
 is shown in firing from the right shoulder and 
 sighting with the right eye. I have two pa- 
 tients, lefthanded in every respect, who have 
 been taught to fire their guns from the right 
 shoulder; but of course they are lefteyed, and 
 they depress the right eye below the level of the 
 gun, and sight with the dominant left eye. 
 Rightfootedness, less differentiated of course, 
 must follow righthandedness and righteyedness, 
 so that all soldiers (and free masons, too) must 
 step off with the left foot first, i.e.,, the spring 
 must be made with the right. The loss of the 
 right hand, or right eye, mutilations, etc., very 
 common in barbaric times, would help to 
 account for the preservation of the present four 
 percent of lefthanded people. 
 
 Because the underlying and governing condi- 
 
 122 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 tion wliy the man must be generally dextral, or 
 generally sinistral, is the evident necessity that 
 the centers governing a co-ordinated set of func- 
 tions, must be located in the same cerebral 
 hemisphere. To make any important act pre- 
 cise, purposive, harmoniously, and rapidly 
 effective, several interacting and fusing cere- 
 bral centers must conjoin their functions : 
 Vision, the chief of all, must present the prob- 
 lem, determine the spacial or topographical 
 relations, etc.; hearing, smell, taxis, etc., may 
 or may not enter into the matter as auxiliaries ; 
 memory of past facts, stored chiefly in the same 
 side of the brain, undoubtedly is called upon 
 for other data (and memory is almost entirely 
 a gallery of stored photographs made by the 
 eye!) — ^then judgment and decision, working 
 upon the data gathered from all subordinates, 
 issues in the word which is the seal of volition, 
 and in act which is reality or the incorporation 
 of the psyche in objective sense and effect, in 
 the materiality beyond cancellation or change. 
 The essence of the matter is, therefore, were the 
 chief of the contributing centers creating word 
 and act divided between the two cerebral hemi- 
 spheres, the certainty and celerity of the word 
 
 123 
 
\ 
 
 RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 and act would be lessened by the difficulty and 
 delay consequent upon fusing the products of 
 these remotely placed and poorly united centers. 
 Hence the law that the better expertness of the 
 chief dextral organs requires that the other 
 co-operating organs, also more expert, must 
 also be upon the dextral side. And vice versa of 
 sinistral expertness. The centers of all organs 
 contributing to the composite terminal act must 
 be in the same cerebral hemisphere. All physi- 
 ology and pathology show that the speech 
 center, a single organ, can be and is located in 
 only one side of the brain, sinistrocerebral in 
 the righthanded, and that the hand which 
 executes the writing act, the most intellectual 
 of all acts, dominates the location of the speech- 
 center in the opposite half -brain. The "ambi- 
 dextral" societies, the mothers and school 
 teachers, who would martyrize children natu- 
 rally lefthanded by compelling them to learn an 
 equal expertness of the right hand, are the most 
 blunderful of stupid persons. No person ever 
 was or ever can be made equally expert with 
 both hands, and every attempt results in 
 tragedy for the patient. To carry out the 
 egregious plan thoroughly, flutes, half the 
 
 124 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING^ 
 
 violins, carpenters' and mechanics' tools, etc., 
 and half the pianos should be made for the 
 dextral ' ' ambidextralists, " and half for the 
 sinistral ''ambidextralists." All musicians 
 should play half the time lefthanded and half 
 righthanded on reversed piano keyboards, re- 
 versely strung violins, etc. ; all carpenters and 
 mechanics should work one day righthanded 
 and the next lefthanded, with suitable tools ; all 
 soldiers drill lefthanded and leftfooted one day, 
 and the reverse the ensuing day, etc., etc. What 
 a world it would be if those who are wiser than 
 God and Nature had their way ! 
 
 Were it so, all laws and customs as to the 
 *'Rule of the Road" would have to be changed 
 so that carriages, foot-passengers, etc., should 
 pass half the time to the left and half to the 
 right. All double-track railroads would then 
 order trains to pass one day to the right and 
 the next to the left, and their locomotive-en- 
 gineers would then sit half the time on the right 
 side of their cabs, and the other half on the 
 left side. It took a whole generation time of 
 experiments and mechanics to learn that the 
 engineer must stand or sit on the right side of 
 his engine or cab in order that he could look 
 
 125 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ahead with his right or dominant eye only, and 
 without sticking his entire head out, as he would 
 have to do if he sat or stood on the left side. 
 The railroad men never learned why this is so, 
 do not know why to-day, and to make the desir- 
 able change in three American left-passing 
 double-track railroads, while it would finallv 
 avoid expense and accidents, would cost at once 
 many millions of dollars. Thousands of years 
 ago knights and men fighting on foot or horse- 
 back had to approach and pass each other on the 
 left in order to strike or spear each other with 
 the right hand while the shield-hand held the 
 shield or the reins. The railway engineer, civil 
 or locomotive, does not know that the knight 
 was his righthanded and righteyed progenitor 
 and endower. 
 
 A flood of light is thrown upon history, 
 sociology, and medicine, especially upon psy- 
 chology^, neurology, and psychiatry, by left- 
 handedness and its sequels. Of every million 
 born at least 30,000, probably more, are natu- 
 rally lefthanded, so that in the United States 
 there are nearly 3,000,000, and in the world over 
 45,000,000, thus handicapped. An indefinite 
 proportion of these have been or are being 
 
 126 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 doubly cursed by the efforts of the foolish 
 parent or teachers to make them righthanded. 
 Sad suggestions and illustrations of the baleful 
 results of the work of these improvers of 
 Nature exist in such simple facts as that right, 
 which should mean only dextral or righthanded, 
 has come to mean good, moral, advisable; and 
 left, or sinistral, has become sinister, awkward, 
 unlucky, to be avoided, both person and thing. 
 Dexterity and dextrousness, properly meaning 
 only dextrality, have become synonymous with 
 expertness and exceptional proficiency, whereas 
 everybody knows that the lefthanded person, if 
 purely so, is as cunning of hand as the right- 
 handed. Even the superstition of the ''evil 
 eye" — the nondominant one — teaches the same 
 lesson. In all ages, and now surely, there are 
 everywhere strange and unaccountable cases of 
 "failure in life," "peculiar," "odd," "awk- 
 ward" folk, cranks of a hundred types, misfits, 
 stutterers, and all that. What a light the mis- 
 placement of the cerebral center for speech and 
 writing, or its pernicious double placing and 
 maleducation and crippling by " ambidextral- 
 ists," throws upon the origin and fate of many 
 stutterers, and upon many of the "hopelessly 
 
 127 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 stupid, ' ' the laggards in school ! How many of 
 the medieval court jesters and the derided, the 
 town-fools, the kyphotics, and cripples were the 
 products of the ''sinister" superstition of the 
 righthanded tyrants'? And how many of the 
 morbid-minded and insane? 
 
 Incidental and accidental results of the study 
 of these cases would solve many problems and 
 mysteries of medicine, and surely of psy- 
 chology. Pathology is physiology gone astray. 
 The thorough-going study of individual cases 
 of aberrant neurology will be found to illumine 
 many of the dark places of mental and moral 
 genesis, function and law. 
 
 No. laL and No. IftR illustrate the natural 
 ordinary single-hand, or discrete, writing, each 
 made under the influence of the visual (which 
 
 128 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 also includes the central, mental, or intellectual) 
 attention. In each case the writing is equally 
 clear, equally respecting the laws of symmetry, 
 and equally correct in topography, direction, 
 localization in space, etc. The slant of the let- 
 ters, a visual result, is in each case that common 
 in dextromanual writers, and in sinistromanual 
 writers. It should be borne in attention that 
 these slantings of the individual letters are in 
 occidental nations dictated by visual function 
 and, when unconscious, are always present; 
 they are preserved even in the most peculiar 
 or abnormal of the tests to follow. The origins 
 of these slants I have set forth elsewhere. 
 Noteworthy in the illustrations above is the fact 
 that the sinistromanual writing does not fill the 
 allotted 3 3-8 in., but is condensed laterally, not 
 vertically, so that relatively the object occupies 
 only about three-fourths of the longitudinal 
 space taken by the dextromanual writing. It 
 must not be forgotten that the ''patient" or 
 ''subject" was congenitally lefthanded, but by 
 practice and lifelong habit a dextromanual 
 writer. The preservation, under these circum- 
 stances, of a sinistromanual proficiency equal to 
 that of the dextromanual is significant, both for 
 
 9 129 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the neurologist and for the "ambidexterity" 
 societies. 
 
 No. l&L and No. IfeR, also written separately 
 with closed eyes, bring* out the effects of the 
 absence of visual attention. Central attention 
 alone appears to be at best a somewhat vague 
 and inaccurate representation and product of 
 visual attention, yielding want of sense of direc- 
 tion (slanting of the left line upward, of the 
 right downward to an equal degree), and rela- 
 tively equal inaccuracies in the forms of 
 individual letters in both samples. That the 
 topographic or spacial sense is the direct 
 product of visual attention is again suggested 
 by the fact that, without its aid, the central 
 attention reverses the result seen in laL and 
 laR, as to filling of the allotted longitudinal or 
 
 130 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 lateral space. With the left hand (right cere- 
 bral center) it fills the entire space, with the 
 right hand (left cerebral center) only about 
 three-fourths is occupied. Lack of the influence 
 of the acquired and inherited visual attention 
 has therefore generally an effect in laterally 
 contracting the space-content in the acquired 
 dextromanual habit, and correspondingly en- 
 larging that of the congenital and disused 
 sinistromanual habit. The inheritance of 
 spacial sense of all past ancestors requires the 
 instant's influence, in the act, of visual attention 
 to insure the best accuracv. 
 
 2* L 
 
 No. 2aL and No. 2aR are synchronous writ- 
 ings, under the influence of visual attention 
 (which 'includes central attention) upon the 
 forms made by the dextral hand. The sinistral 
 is here the hand of nonattention ; let us call it 
 
 131 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 The Trailing Hand. Although for writing it is 
 the life-long habitually disused hand, it was 
 the one first used and habited in writing, and 
 its central mechanism in the right cerebral half- 
 brain has preserved perfection of function, 
 despite disuse, and "trails" more perfectly 
 than the dextral in the next example, 2feE. The 
 lateral space is again less completely filled by 
 the sinistral hand, although it is the ' ' trailer. ' ' 
 
 No. 2&L and No. 2&R were written under the 
 same conditions as No. 2aL and No. 2aR, i.e., 
 synchronously without visual attention, but 
 with visual and central attention fixed upon the 
 sinistral movements, the dextral hand being the 
 trailer. The sinistral space again is not filled ; 
 the accuracy and perfection of the writing of 
 the sinistral is a little better than in No. 
 2rtL, but the noteworthy fact appears that al- 
 
 132 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 though the central mechanism of the dextral 
 hand has been the life-long habitually functional 
 one, its natural repugnance, unfitness, etc., is 
 shown when it is deprived of the factor of visual 
 and central attention, the individual letters 
 being generally slovenly formed, the i not 
 dotted, etc. It trails worse than the sinistral 
 despite its education. 
 
 id-L 
 
 The effect of depriving synchronous bilateral 
 writing of visual attention is shown in 2cL, 2cR, 
 2dlj, and 2^R. In the 2c series central atten- 
 
 133 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tion was fixed upon the dextromanual move- 
 ments, the sinistral hand being the trailer. In 
 the 2d series the central attention is fixed upon 
 the sinistromanual movements, the dextral hand 
 becoming the trailer. In both cases the sinis- 
 tral writing is the more condensed laterally. 
 The effect of synchronously carrying on the 
 bilateral movements (without visual attention 
 and only with mental attention) is not so bad 
 upon the sinistral as upon the dextral writing, 
 even when the sinistral is the trailer and the 
 dextral has the advantage of central attention. 
 No amount of habit or usage abrogates the 
 primal trend towards lefthandedness or makes 
 the acquired writing expertness of the dextral 
 hand equal to it. 
 
 Series 3 further illustrates the general laws 
 already observed by the condition of mirror- 
 writing. No. 3a shows the ability of tliis sub- 
 
 134 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 ject to write with either hand, alone, and with 
 visual attention directed to the movements. By 
 looking through the paper, back to the eyes, or 
 by the use of a hand mirror, one sees that the 
 mirroring or reversing of the dextral hand is 
 less perfectly and correctly done than with the 
 sinistral mechanism. The subject says of this 
 that with the sinistral hand the reversal is 
 ''done easily, rapidly, and automatically," 
 while with the dextral hand it is carried out 
 "with difficulty and slowly." 
 
 li-Xi 
 
 A-^O^^ 
 
 The effect of the deprivation of visual atten- 
 tion upon mirror-writing shown in 3fe series 
 further illustrates the foregoing suggestions. 
 Each is written separately, and by the aid of 
 
 135 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 central attention only. "The right reverses 
 just as badly" as in the case immediately pre- 
 ceding. The sinistral hand does its work far 
 better than the dextral under the disadvantage, 
 and the comparative loss of the sense of direc- 
 tion and space-relation is strikingly manifest. 
 For the first time is shown the tendency, slight 
 in the sinistral hand, marked in the dextral, 
 towards a declination, and a double one, of the 
 two words, from the right to the left, i.e., in the 
 direction in which the mirror writing proceeds. 
 The sinistral writing is again the more con- 
 densed. 
 
 \ 
 
 ^^z; 
 
 3^^ 
 
 The complications of the problem, as well as 
 of the interest, increase in the remarkable 
 (unique?) ability of this subject to execute 
 mirror-writing with both hands synchronously. 
 
 13G 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 The results are shown in 3cL and 3cR, written 
 with the visual (and central) attention fixed 
 upon the movements of the sinistromanual pen. 
 The trailing dextral is the worst so far in all 
 respects — either as to formation of the letters, 
 declination, and even overlapping of the lines 
 from right to left, and overrunning of the space 
 both lateral and vertical. The topographic or 
 space-limits are little recognized or observed, 
 and character or individuality of the writing is 
 lost. But here arises the most noteworthy and 
 significant statement of the subject: ^'I find 
 that I cannot execute what would be the logi- 
 cally preceding series, i.e., when the mind is 
 fixed upon the right-hand movements. TJiep 
 will not go." Nature flatly balked and refused 
 to budge. Motion was entirely inhibited with 
 the attempt at two-handed mirror writing when 
 visual attention was fixed upon the dextro- 
 manual movements. Such writing could only 
 be carried out when the dextral was the trailing- 
 hand. In this case there was, therefore, suffi- 
 cient perfection of the dextromanual mechanism 
 to trail, that is, to act, and badly, as an auto- 
 maton, by the aid of the more perfect, though 
 disused initiative of the sinistromanual one. 
 
 137 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 To initiate was impossible when it had to supply 
 subordinate directing force and control to the 
 trailing sinistral hand. 
 
 3^2* 
 
 V" 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 J^^ 
 
 When deprived of visual attention by the aid 
 of central attention alone, synchronous mirror- 
 writing, with both hands, again repeats and 
 accentuates the preceding conclusions. This is 
 shown in Sdh and 3dR. Again the central at- 
 tention is fixed upon the left-hand movements; 
 the right is still able to trail, but notice the 
 lateral concentration of the two words deprived 
 of the control of visual attention, the degrada- 
 tion of form of all the letters, almost to inde- 
 cipherability, the sharp declination of the line- 
 direction from the dextral to the sinistral side, 
 etc. The space-sense or topographic conscious- 
 
 138 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 ness is nearly lost. The trailing has become so 
 inaccurate and wretched as to be denominated 
 vagrancy. And of course with mental or cen- 
 tral attention only fixed upon the dextromanual 
 task there is even a more absolute impossibility 
 than in series 3c of executing any legible or 
 orderly movements whatsoever. ''They will 
 not go." But even when deprived of visual 
 attention the central attention upon the sinis- 
 tral hand is able to make fair copy, and to do 
 much toward helping out the trailing dextral. 
 No amount of use and education could give the 
 dextral mechanism the initiative and effective- 
 ness retained by the thirty-five-year-long dis- 
 used sinistrocerebral centers. 
 
 
 ^^Ti 
 
 The task remained of writing synchronously 
 with both hands, nonnal style with one hand, 
 
 139 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 mirror style with the other. No. 4aL and No. 
 4aR is the first illustration, made with visual 
 attention fixed upon the dextromanual move- 
 ments. In this case the dextral hand writes 
 normal style, the sinistral mirror style. The 
 trailing sinistral line climbs a little as it moves 
 onward, but the character, accuracy, etc., are 
 well preserved in both. 
 
 ^(rL 
 
 In Nos. 4&L and 4&R the visual attention is 
 fix:ed upon the sinistral hand ; the dextromanual 
 writing is in normal style, the sinistromanual in 
 mirror style. The writings are synchronously 
 executed. That of the dextral hand is more 
 inco-ordinate, tends still more than before to 
 overrun the lateral limits, ascends as it pro- 
 ceeds, etc., but both are easily legible. The 
 
 140 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 superior initiative and controlling power of the 
 dextrocerebral mechanism is re-exemplified. 
 
 VfrC 
 
 Nos. 4cL and 4cE repeat Nos. 4aL and 4aR, 
 with the exception that the movements are de- 
 prived of the guidance and control of visual 
 attention. The tasks are synchronous, of both 
 hands, and the central attention in this instance 
 is fixed upon the movements of the dextro- 
 manual pen. The dextral hand leads and writes 
 normal style, the sinistral trails and writes 
 mirror style. Both lines decline from a hori 
 zontal somewhat as they proceed. Although 
 the mental attention is upon the dextromanual 
 movements, the sinistral hand restricts its work 
 to normal and usual lateral limits, while the 
 difl&culty of its task, in originating and con- 
 
 141 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 trolling the trailer, seems to make the dextral 
 lose the sense of space limits heretofore ob- 
 served. But even here the legibility of the 
 writing of the sinistromanual trailer is well 
 preserved. 
 
 In Nos. 4:dlj and 4f/R the conditions of the 
 last test are observed, except that the central 
 attention is fixed upon the sinistromanual 
 movements. The level of the lines is better 
 kept; legibility of both writings is good; the 
 lateral limits of space are preserved or ex- 
 ceeded in the same way as in 4cL and 4cE. 
 
 In Nos. 5aL and 5aR the sinistral hand writes 
 normal style and the dextral writes mirror style 
 synchronously. Visual attention is permitted 
 and fixes the sinistromanual movements, which 
 climb a little, but which result is legible writing. 
 
 142 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 But the associated ones of the trailing dextral 
 hand become almost illegible and have lost 
 nearly all sense of orderly topographic con- 
 sciousness. As in the 3c series the subject 
 again explains that ''it will not go with the 
 visual attention fixed on the right-hand move- 
 ments. ' ' The stint was found impossible. And 
 
 sSSZ 
 
 of the greatest significance is the further state- 
 ment that "this form of reversal was always 
 the least satisfactory, and is not now so good 
 as it used to be." Later, upon request, Miss 
 K. writes: ''Some time before I was twenty I 
 discovered that I could do this reverse writing, 
 and since then I have occasionally amused my 
 friends by doing it, but very seldom. Until I 
 did this for you it is surely five years since 
 
 143 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 I last tried it. I did not notice the inability to 
 do this particular specimen less well imtil I 
 tried it this time for you. I have no specimens 
 written in the past." The co-ordination of the 
 two cerebral hemispheres is therefore losing an 
 acquired function or aspect, and reverting to a 
 desirable and natural singleness or mono- 
 laterality. Confusion, awkwardness, inhibition, 
 indecision, or imperfection of function must fol- 
 low decision or action initiated or controlled by 
 centers co-operating from different sides of 
 the cerebrum. 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 The limit of illegibility and loss of the sense 
 of spacial relations is shown in Nos. 56L and 
 56E, written under the conditions imposed in 
 5a, except that the sinistromanual movements 
 
 144 
 
TWO-HANDED SYNCHRONOUS WRITING 
 
 were deprived of the help of visual attention. 
 Of course it was again wholly impossible to 
 write anything whatever when the mental atten- 
 tion was fixed upon the dextromanual writing 
 movements. 
 
 10 145 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 VISUAL FUNCTION THE CAUSE OF SLANTED HAND- 
 WRITING; ITS RELATION TO SCHOOL HYGIENE, 
 SCHOOL DESKS, MALPOSTURE, SPINAL 
 CURVATURE, AND MYOPIA.* 
 
 Slanted Handivriting is Bad, hut not because 
 of Bad Reasons. — Careful and trustworthy 
 statistics show that on the average 27 percent 
 of the pupils in the primary grades of the 
 schools of Europe have lateral spinal curva- 
 ture. The fact is as terrifying as the greatest 
 in pathology, as bad, for instance, as the preva- 
 lence of tuberculosis. There is no reason to 
 doubt that American children are less scoliotic 
 than those of Lausanne, Dresden, etc. If not 
 actually crying out against slanted handwriting 
 and school-desks as the causes of this appalling 
 disease, almost all orthopedists and school 
 hygienists admit or suggest it. And yet slant 
 handwriting is not only not the cause of the 
 writing malposture and of scoliosis, it is only a 
 minor effect of the writ^g malposture. It is 
 
 Medical Record, April 22, 1905 ; Biographic Clinics, Vol. iii. 
 
 146 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 not only an effect, but, bad as it is, it is a 
 method of avoiding worse malposture. To no 
 one could such a style of writing be more re- 
 pulsive than to me, and yet, as one must so 
 often emphasize, the bad reason does not make 
 it bad. The reasons for vertical vs. slanted 
 handwriting must be scientific and true or the 
 slanting will never be done away with. There 
 are considerations very different, and of in- 
 finitely more importance than the slanting itself, 
 why such writing must be abolished. 
 
 Factors of the Writing Malposture. — All acts 
 or habits are wrong some of the time, and some 
 acts or habits are partly wrong all of the time. 
 Only the act of writing, as commonly carried 
 out, is wholly wrong all the time. 
 
 1. In a state of rest every object illustrates 
 and obeys the law of gravity, equilibrium, or 
 architecture, which demands that its center of 
 gravity must be vertically above its base or 
 point of support. A feeling of strain or irrita- 
 tion arises in the mind when natural objects do 
 not conform to this law. Tumbling-down 
 chirography does not obey this law. 
 
 2. The letters of the alphabet are convention- 
 alized pictures or ideograms of the pictograms 
 
 147 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 or pictures of natural objects — the ox, horse, 
 camel, door, window, hook, serpent, hand, fish, 
 water, eye, mouth, head, etc. These prototypes, 
 of course, obeyed the law of gravity in Phoe- 
 nician and Semitic times as they do now. The 
 modern written letters of the alphabet should 
 do the same. 
 
 3. All printed and type-written letters and 
 musical notes preserve the erect position. The 
 handmade letters should conform to the rule. 
 
 4. The slant method of writing is a result of 
 the writer's personal difficulties, but the char- 
 acter of the writing is, or should be, dictated by 
 the consideration of the reader's sake, not 
 because of the writer's personal or pathologic 
 trouble. 
 
 5. More important than all the foregoing is 
 the fact that the vast majority of all persons 
 have some astigmatism, and about 95 percent 
 of all astigmatisms are at or about the axes 90° 
 and 180°, and such eyes demand the prevailing 
 lines of things seen at 90° or 180°. 
 
 Even if no astigmatism is present, or if that 
 which is present is not in the neighborhood of 
 90° or 180°, the habit of equilibrium, and the 
 inheritance from all ancestors of the habit of 
 
 148 
 
THE WRITING^POSTURE 
 
 holding the head erect and of seeing with the 
 eyes coincident with the usual 90° and 180° 
 axes, would compel the customary position. 
 
 The secondary factors, which determine the 
 posture and malposture of the body, and the 
 character of the handwriting, vertical, slanted, 
 or otherwise improper, are : 
 
 1. The position or posture of the head. 
 
 2. The position or posture of the body. 
 
 3. The location of the paper upon the desk. 
 
 4. The angling or skewing of the paper as 
 regards the right angles of the desk top or 
 writing board. 
 
 5. The flatness or inclination of the desk 
 top or writing board. 
 
 6. The relative height and distance apart of 
 the desk and seat. 
 
 7. The position of the hand, method of hold- 
 ing the penholder, etc. 
 
 8. The necessity of parallelism between the 
 vertical axis of the head, or what is the same 
 thing, of the 90° axes of astigmatism of the 
 eyes, and the vertical lines, real, supposed, or 
 presented by the formed lines of the written 
 letters. 
 
 9. The relative position of the right or domi- 
 
 149 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 nant eye, and the unhindered meeting of the 
 visual axes of both eyes, upon what may be 
 called the writing-field, i.e., the space at and 
 about the pen-point. 
 
 Briefly epitomized, this etiologic factor arises 
 from a bending of the head to the left, skewing 
 of the paper, etc., in writing, in order that both 
 eyes of the writer may have a clear view of the 
 writing-field or space about the pen-point. And 
 especially by the right or dominant eye, the one 
 corresponding in function, and particularly in 
 writing, with the righthandedness (expertness) 
 of the righthanded person. This canting of the 
 head to the left produces a functional cervical 
 curve with the convexity to the right, wliich I 
 suggest is the primary factor in the formation 
 of subsequent compensation curves of the spine 
 below. Orthopedists seem to have forgotten 
 that the cervical vertebras are part of the spinal 
 column ; any lateral bending of any part of the 
 column produces twisting or rotation, with the 
 production of reverse or secondary curves later, 
 in the effort at compensation. George Sand and 
 all the advocates of vertical handwriting have 
 persistently demanded Ecriture droite, sur 
 papier droit, corps droit — vertical handwriting, 
 
 150 
 
Fig. 1 — The hand in the writinff posture as usually ordered but not 
 practiced, because to the writer the writing-field is hidden by the 
 thumb, finger, and holder. View of an actual hand with the writer's 
 head displaced. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 on vertical paper, the body also vertical. 
 Knowing what was and is intended by the 
 words, not what literally is said, we may add 
 that even this intended advice is impossible of 
 execution. No righthanded person ever writes 
 so, or could write so, i.e., if the paper (as sup- 
 posed) is horizontal, placed squarely (not 
 skewed) before the median line of the body, and 
 the penholder held as instructed in the "correct 
 position," i.e., with the upper end pointing 
 toward the shoulder. No one ever wrote a line 
 in this position, and simply because he could 
 not see the letters he was making. And to 
 write we must see the letters which are being 
 formed. (See Fig. 1.) 
 
 Details as to the Nine Factors of Malposture 
 in Writing. — 
 
 1. The position of the head may be : 
 
 a. Perfectly erect, its long or vertical axis 
 corresponding with the vertebral axis when the 
 body is erect and accurately and squarely in 
 front of the desk. 
 
 h. Canted or tilted to one side, to the left in 
 the righthanded, and in various degrees. 
 
 c. Twisted on the vertical axis of the head 
 and neck, to the right in writing, by the right- 
 handed. 
 
 151 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 d. Positions a and c, combined or mixed. 
 
 e. Positions h and c, combined or mixed. 
 2. Tlie posture of the body may be : 
 
 /. Erect, the lateral axis parallel with the 
 front line of the desk. 
 
 g. Bent to the left (in the righthanded) in 
 varying degrees, the vertebral column being 
 either straight or curved. 
 
 h. The spinal column twisted in varying 
 degrees. 
 
 i. The right side of the body turned toward 
 the desk or approximated to it more or less. 
 
 j. Varying combinations of the positions g, h, 
 and i. 
 
 In practical and unconscious writing the 
 positions of the head and postures of the body 
 above enumerated under 1 and 2 may be and 
 usually are mixed and interdependent, thus 
 resulting in many modifications and variations. 
 
 3 and 4. The location and angling of the 
 paper upon the desk may be : 
 
 k. In front of the face and squarely placed, 
 i.e., its lower border parallel with the front of 
 the desk. 
 
 I. Askew, at varying angles to the left, but 
 usually at an angle of about 35° with the desk 
 front. 
 
 152 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 m. With the lefthand border parallel with the 
 desk front. 
 
 n. Opposite the right shoulder in head and 
 body postures a and /, the lower border parallel 
 with the desk front. 
 
 With the ordinary straight penholder and pen 
 held as universally ordered, and the head and 
 body in postures a and /, no ordinary human 
 being can write, because the index finger and 
 the pen necessarily come between the right eye 
 and the pen-point. (Fig. 1.) Therefore, every 
 writer immediately disobeys the teacher and 
 varies one or all of the positions, postures, etc., 
 so that the dominant eye has an unobstructed 
 view of the writing-field. (Fig. 2.) The most 
 extreme position of the body and head I have 
 ever seen was in a patient who had an enormous 
 astigmatism, and who was compelled to bring 
 the eyes almost to a level of the table, with 
 extreme rotation of the head in order to bring 
 the astigmatic axes into parallelism with the 
 lines of the writing being executed. Position 
 n of the paper is the only one that permits of 
 the perfectly erect or hygienic postures of the 
 head and body designated as a and /, because 
 only under such conditions can the dominant 
 
 153 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 eye have a clear view of the writing field. 
 5. But the difficulty of writing in these post- 
 ures and conditions is greatly increased by 
 the flat desk, and is almost done away with by 
 an inclination of the desk leaf or writing board 
 at an angle of 30°. The ink will still flow from 
 the pen with the leaf at this angle, the position 
 of the head and body made most comfortable 
 and hygienic, and the unconscious tendency to 
 bend the head and body is neutralized. The 
 copyists and monks of medieval and Latin times 
 learned this, as is illustrated by the annexed 
 cut. (Fig. 3.) An added and highly important 
 consideration is that by the 30° or 40° sloped 
 desk leaf, the eyes are enabled to look off at the 
 book or writing at nearly a horizontal line, 
 instead of down upon it with the eyes nearly 
 vertically over the letters. The traction on the 
 inferior recti muscles of the eyes with the re- 
 sultant unnatural position of the eyes, is a 
 prolific source of eyestrain. It also compresses 
 the chest, humps the back, interferes with the 
 circulation of the neck, the supply of blood to 
 the brain, and the flow of air in and out of the 
 lungs in breathing. The inclination of the desk 
 may be more pitched in reading than in writing. 
 
 154 
 
Fig. 2 — The common but in the picture somewhat exaggerated writ- 
 ing malposture method of holding the pen, skewing the paper, bend- 
 ing of body, torsion of head, etc., in order to gain a clearer view of 
 the writing-field. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 0. The child's feet must rest lightly and natu- 
 rally upon the floor, with the knees bent at about 
 a right angle, the body at the proper distance 
 from the edge of the desk. This can be effected 
 
 Fig. 3 — ^The medieval copyists wrote with the paper 
 pitched at a sharp angle. 
 
 only by means of a seat that may be raised or 
 depressed, and not attached to the floor. 
 
 6. The organizers, teachers, trustees, furni- 
 ture makers, and parents have too often failed 
 to notice that children differ in height from 
 
 155 
 
RIGHTHx\NDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 adults, differ from each other, and that they 
 have a habit of growing. Even the most pro- 
 gressive in ver}^ recent years have not come to 
 a thorough-going knowledge of these simple 
 facts, and have not made the school desks and 
 seats to conform accurately to them. What is 
 now needed is mechanical constructions which 
 will meet the differences of each child in an 
 easy and perfect manner. 
 
 p. The leaf of the desk, in addition to being- 
 inclined at an angle of about 30°, must be of 
 a height which brings the printed book and 
 writing paper at a distance of about 14 inches 
 from the eyes. 
 
 q. The pedagogs have also usually failed to 
 notice that in reading a book it may be placed 
 opposite the median line of the body or face (in 
 erect position), but that in writing the paper 
 should not be thus placed. Hence the frequent 
 permission in writing to turn the right side of 
 the body toward the desk. When the paper is 
 placed opposite the right shoulder upon a 
 sharply-inclined desk leaf of the proper height, 
 the eyes can see the writing-field without un- 
 natural positions of the body and head. 
 
 7. Everyone has probably wondered why, 
 
 15G 
 
Fig. 4 — The usual writing posture. The body and head are bent 
 to the left, the head in addition rotated so that the chin is to the 
 right; there is a cervical curve with the convexity to the right; the 
 right side of the body is turned toward the desk; the paper is skewed 
 to the left; the predominant 90° axes of astigmatism, d d, are at 
 approximate right angles to the vertical lines of the paper, a a ; to 
 lessen the strain upon the body, neck and eyes, the approximate par- 
 allelism of the lines c 6, with the lines a a, of the skewed paper is 
 varied, causing the obliquity of the written letters to the right, or 
 the slanted style of handwriting. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 when the school and writing teacher are ignored 
 or forgotten, the pen and holder are either 
 slanted differently; held between the first and 
 second fingers; not seldom angled parallel 
 with the lateral lines of the paper, even nearly 
 vertical, or toward the upright lines of the 
 paper ; drawn inward and toward the chest, the 
 eyes above and looking down vertically upon 
 the sheet; and the head in various other un- 
 natural and cramping positions. (Fig. 4.) 
 Such anomalies are too frequent to be called 
 anomalies, and are simply the unconscious 
 morbid methods whereby the dominant eye gets 
 a free view of the writing-field. The types of 
 this unhygienic pen-holding are too numerous 
 and anomalous to be classified. 
 
 Artists, by means of long-handled brushes, 
 etc., are able to gain a clear view of large spaces 
 about the point of the brush, pencil, etc., by 
 grasping the handle several inches from the 
 point. They are thus under no necessity of 
 inclining the head and body. Also their can- 
 vases, easels, etc., are either vertical or nearly 
 so, and this does away with the visual difficulty 
 encountered when the surface is horizontal or 
 only slightly inclined. 
 
 157 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANUEDNESS 
 
 8. Some authors describe postures in which 
 the body is leaned to the right, but they are not 
 practiced because the writing-field is thus hid- 
 
 FiG. 5 — A malposture pictured and described by authors, 
 but never practiced by one in writing, because the writing- 
 field would not be visible. The artist unconsciously shows 
 the cervical curve with convexity to the right, almost always 
 present in dextral writers. 
 
 den to a greater degree. (Figs. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.) 
 In all the multitude of improper postures, 
 positions, pen-holdings, etc., the teachers of 
 writing, hygiene, and physiology have failed to 
 notice that by some device nature will bring it 
 
 158 
 
Fig. 6 — Some liysienists describe a form of iiialposture consisting: in 
 skewing the paper to the right and bending the body and head to 
 the right ; it is never practiced because the writing-field is still more 
 hidden than in the posture of Fig. 3 ordered as " correct." 
 
Fig. 7 — View of the writing-field as seen by the writer with skewed 
 paper, and with tlie body and head turned to the left. 
 
YiG. 8 — To gain a better view of the writing-field the pupil instead 
 of leaning to the left, sometimes bends forward until the eyes are 
 directly above or es-en in advance, of the writing, lateral curvature 
 and rotation of the spine being thus avoided. 
 
Fig. 9 — The writing-field brought into clear view by holding 
 the penholder between the first and second finger, thus lessen- 
 ing the need of bending the body or head to the left The 
 view is as tne writer sees it, his head being out of the field 
 in order to photograph the hand. 
 
Fig. 10 — To secure a better view of the writing-field the hand is 
 held in a straining and unnatural position, the holder directed 90° to 
 the right of the right shoulder. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 about that the 90° axes of the eyes and astig- 
 matism will be forced into parallelism with the 
 vertical or slanted lines of the long letters being 
 written. Hence the multiplicity of morbid 
 postures begotten by the failure to place the 
 paper properly before the right shoulder and 
 with the head and body erect, with the inclined 
 desk leaf, and the penholder properly seized. 
 
 9. Only when these conditions last named are 
 assured has the dominant eye an unobstructed 
 view of the writing-field, at the proper distances, 
 etc. To secure this clear view of the writing- 
 field with the paper placed according to uni- 
 versal instruction, the head and body are forced 
 into unnatural positions. The unnaturalness 
 and weariness of these morbid postures are 
 lessened a little by the slanting of the letters to 
 the right, and the tendency of the line of writing 
 to slant upward. This any one can demon- 
 strate by a few thoughtful tests or observations. 
 And this is the source of slanted handwriting. 
 (Fig. 4.) It is in fact a method of avoiding still 
 more extreme torsion of the head or neck — a 
 greater morbid slant of the patient by a slant 
 of the writing, 
 
 I cannot find that anyone who has written of 
 
 159 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 handwriting or of school hygiene, or who has 
 constructed or advised as to the making of 
 school desks and seats, has ever dreamed of 
 the patent and easily recognized fact that every 
 one of the nine factors are verities, and that 
 they are bound together into a co-ordinate unity. 
 None of them can be much changed without 
 changing all of the others, and unconsciously 
 every pupil and writer has solved the problem 
 of carrying out the writing act by a special and 
 personal adaptation and modification of each 
 of the factors mentioned. The one all-domi- 
 nating necessity which everyone discussing the 
 subject seems to have overlooked, is that the 
 wi'iting-field (the space about the pen-point) 
 shall be seen, seen with both eyes, but especially 
 seen with the right eye. I speak of righthanded 
 and righteyed persons. All is reversed as to 
 the lefthanded and lefteyed. The essence of 
 the matter is the necessity of binocularity and 
 especially the existence of a righteyedness, a 
 hitherto unrecognized thing, and the most inti- 
 mate co-ordination of the right eye and right 
 hand in the most mental and intellectual of all 
 acts, except speech — that is, writing. The posi- 
 tions usually taught by school teachers, writing 
 
 160 
 
Fig. 11 — The normal or hygienic posture of the lj(jily and head with 
 the paper placed vertically and opposite the right shoulder. The arm 
 and head thus have free motion. There is some constraint, due to 
 the flat desk, a too great distance of the writing, and the fact that 
 the visual axes, falling at an angle of about 4.5°, demand a bending 
 of the head forwards, or too great traction on the depressor muscles 
 of the eyes. 
 
Fig. 12 — With the desk-leaf pitdied at an angle of 30° or 40°, the 
 posture is hygienically perfect, anil the faults of Fig. 6 are entirely 
 avoided. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 teachers, and copy-books are next to impossible, 
 certainly not practised by the child or man 
 when writing much or unconsciously. Then 
 nature modifies all the nine factors mentioned, 
 solely and simply in order that the hand, fingers, 
 and pen shall not come between the right eye 
 and the writing-field. The pathology of school 
 life in a multitude of symptoms and diseases 
 consists for the greater part in the unhygienic 
 attempts to see the writing-field with the domi- 
 nant eye. And the two great blunders of all 
 the teachers and desk-makers are that the pen- 
 holders and pens are not shaped so that the 
 writing space or field about the pen-point can 
 be seen with both eyes when the body and head 
 are erect ; or that the desk is not inclined at an 
 angle of about 30°, and the writing paper is not 
 placed squarely and opposite the right shoulder, 
 with the body and head erect and squarely 
 postured before the desk. With the paper so 
 placed the desk top so inclined, the body and 
 head thus erect, the right eye sees the paper at 
 12 inches or 14 inches, and the writing is ver- 
 tical. (Fig. 11, 12.) 
 
 Probably as many as 200 distinct styles of 
 school desks and chairs have been proposed, 
 
 11 161 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 tried, and rejected or are in use. The reader 
 may find some of these described in works on 
 school hygiene, such as that of Kotelmann, 
 Meyer, Staffel, Fahrner, Eettig, Hermann, 
 Bendzula, Schildback, Schenk, Hippauf, Prau- 
 sek, Wallraff, Barnard, Priestly Smith, Stone,* 
 Shaw,t and especially Eisley.ii 
 
 So far as these relate to reading of a single 
 book the results reached by students of peda- 
 gogy are of great value^ — ^but with one excep- 
 tion: All advise an inclination of only 10° or 
 15°. It should be at least 30°, and with easily 
 made devices for holding the book should be 
 45°. Even with the 30° inclination the pupil 
 will often hold the book with the hand at a 
 greater inclination, and there is no reason why 
 every desk should not be inclined at least 30°. 
 "When two books are used at one time, or when 
 the pen or pencil is used synchronously with 
 reading, the inclination must be greater than 
 15°, in order to permit hygienic posture. In 
 the writing act hygienic posture is almost im- 
 possible with less than a 30° pitch. This fact, 
 
 * American Physical Education Eeview, June, 1900. 
 
 t Ibid., June, 1901. 
 
 % Norris and Oliver : " System of Disease of the Eye," Vol. ij. 
 
 162 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 together with insufficient space at the right, 
 largely vitiates all previous results, decisions, 
 and mechanisms as regards school-desks. The 
 simple device needed is one which will permit a 
 varying and independent pitch of the two ver- 
 tical halves of the desk itself. It should be 
 possible to give either any pitch between 15° 
 and 45°, and with devices so that the book, slate, 
 paper pad, etc., will not fall, and may be held 
 in place without the hand. If the pencil is used, 
 even as high a pitch as 40° or 45° will be grate- 
 ful to the body and eye. If ink is used, the pitch 
 should be at least 30°, as with this inclination 
 the ink will still flow, and only with so high a 
 pitch is there possible a view of the writing-field 
 with the right eye and at 14 inches distance, 
 when the paper is placed opposite the right 
 shoulder, with the head and body erect, without 
 elevation of the right shoulder; this insures 
 free motion of the right arm and hand in 
 unconstrained and normal positions. The 
 copyists of the middle ages found this to be 
 true, and our school teachers of former genera- 
 tions, who were their direct descendants, for a 
 time kept up this wise tradition. The desk top 
 
 163 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 should be made in two independent halves, the 
 upper or farther edges so constructed that 
 either may be raised, thus varying the pitch 
 from the minimum of 30° to a maximum of 45° 
 and thus adapted to reading or writing at pleas- 
 ure. Thus made, the riglit-hand leaf would be 
 the only one used for writing. All pupils 
 should, of course, have desk and chair so 
 adapted to their height that the book or paper 
 would be at 14 inches from the eye when looking 
 down upon it with a visual axis at an angle or 
 inclination not greater than 150° or 155°. The 
 visual axis at about 150° should approximately 
 form a right angle with the inclination of the 
 desk leaf at about 30°. (According to the 
 oculist's trial frame, and as figured in illustra- 
 tion, the desk top would be at 145° and the 
 visual axis at 35°.) 
 
 The Relation of Occidental and Oriental 
 Writing Postures and MetJiods to Spinal Curva- 
 ture. — In China and Japan the habits and 
 methods of writing present throughout most 
 noteworthy contrasts to those customary with 
 us. The particulars may be briefly epitomized 
 as follows : 
 
 164 
 
Fig. 13 — Oriental method of holding the writing 
 brush, giving an unobstructed view of the writing- 
 field. 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 1. The writing begins at tlie upper right- 
 liand corner of the paper, giving an evident 
 advantage in seeing the writing field or letters 
 which are being formed, and especially with 
 the right or dominant eye. 
 
 2. The lines of writing proceed from the top 
 to the bottom of the page, thus again securing 
 increased visibility of the writing-field. 
 
 3. There is thus no need and no practice of 
 skewing the paper to secure unimpeded vision 
 of the writing-field. The writing is naturally 
 vertical. 
 
 4. The writing brush (corresponding to our 
 pen and holder), is grasped from two to four 
 inches from the brush tip (corresponding to 
 our pen) ; it is held usually between the second 
 and third fingers (instead of between the thumb 
 and first finger as with us), and either upright 
 or slanting away from the writing space, to the 
 right, and not, as our children are instructed, 
 with the holder pointing toward the right shoul- 
 der. (Fig. 13.) Each one of the methods of 
 holding the brush aids decidedly, and collec- 
 tively very powerfully, in keeping the writing 
 space clearly in view of the vision of both eyes. 
 
 165 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 It seems almost as if all these methods were 
 consciously designed that the writing-field 
 might be seen. 
 
 5. In addition, Japanese and Chinese friends 
 tell me it is a habit of many to hold the paper 
 with the left hand, in the air, and pitched at 
 an angle of from 30° to 50°. I did not know 
 of this custom until months after I had written 
 advising a pitch of the leaf of the writing desk 
 of 30°. A greater pitch than this would some- 
 times not permit the ink to flow freely from our 
 steel pens. The medieval copyists used a pitch 
 of 50° or over, and our modern draughtsmen 
 and artists often do the same. Modern artists 
 in painting and sketching secure the clear view 
 of the field of work by setting their canvas 
 nearly vertical and by holding the brush or 
 pencil from three to ten inches from the point. 
 There are more modern writers than we suspect 
 who increase the extent of visibility of the 
 writing-field by holding the pen between the 
 first and second fingers, or by grasping the 
 holder two or three inches from the pen-point, 
 by turning the hand half upward, or by slanting 
 the penholder to the right. But these are de- 
 vices forbidden by teachers (and writing 
 
 1G6 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 books), who have no perception of the simple 
 reason why the so-called "incorrect" habits 
 and postures are unconsciously chosen. 
 
 6. Whether we should imitate the Oriental 
 methods described above, either in part or not, 
 is at present not my concern. Their result is 
 our one great desideratum — the preservation 
 of the erect and hygienic posture during the 
 writing act. There is little or no bending of 
 the head to the left. If this functional right 
 cervical curve, habitual in the Occidental pos- 
 ture, is the cause of the incipient spinal curves 
 of our school children, it follows that there will 
 be far less than 27 percent of Japanese and 
 Chinese children showing such curves between 
 the ages of seven and fourteen years. An or- 
 thopedic examination of the backs of a large 
 number of the children of Oriental schools 
 would yield interesting and critical results. A 
 minor query would be as to the proportion of 
 scoliotics among Occidental children blind from 
 infancy. 
 
 That the approximation to the upright post- 
 ure (not its absolute practice), lessens scoliosis, 
 is apparently shown by the following statistics 
 of examinations of school children: 
 
 167 
 
c 
 
 RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Slant Vertical 
 
 writers writers 
 
 percent percent 
 
 NuiTiberg 34: 15 
 
 Ziiiich 32 12 
 
 Munich 24 15 
 
 Furth 65 31 
 
 Wurzburg 28 8 
 
 The first colunm averages 30 percent, tlie 
 second 16. But if the slanted style is account- 
 able for twice as many scoliotics as the vertical, 
 the vertical is still, apparently, responsible for 
 one-half as many as the slant. It is, therefore, 
 evident that the vertical style did not insure the 
 vertical position of the head and body, or that 
 some other cause is at work. If the true reason 
 of malposition in writing had been understood, 
 and the conception of its cure realized, the re- 
 sults and their suggestions would have differed 
 and been of greater value. The above great 
 differences found in different cities also exhibit 
 an inexactitude which makes no one doubt the 
 valuelessness of the methods employed. 
 
 The School Desk. — There is probably not a 
 pupil's desk in the world constructed upon cor- 
 rect physiologic principles. Many approxi- 
 mate, but fail in one or more important par- 
 ticulars. This is because, with all of the inter- 
 
 168 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 est, study, and invention which have been put 
 into the work, with all that has been written 
 concerning the vertical and slanted handwrit- 
 ing, there has been no understanding of the 
 physiology of righthandedness and righteyed- 
 ness, no comprehension of the optic problem 
 which controls every posture and act. The 
 wrong to the child began with the beginnings 
 of pedagogy. Prior to this handwriting was 
 usually vertical, because without a powerfully 
 dominating necessity no adults, much less the 
 shrewd monks, would have bent themselves to the 
 left and skewed their vellum, tablet, or paper at 
 the absurd angle now common with all writers. 
 But when school teaching began it was, of course, 
 in the houses or rooms of adults, and with their 
 tables, benches, forms or stools. No one then 
 dreamed of the peculiar child nature, not even 
 the size of the child 's body. Hence, he sat upon 
 a bench or seat too low, or what amounts to 
 the same thing, at a table too high for the 
 height of his body, and at about the level of his 
 sternum, neck, or chin. When compelled to 
 write he could do nothing at the desk, except by 
 placing his forearm, and even his elbow, upon 
 the table. Let an adult try to write sitting at a 
 
 169 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 flat table the height of his neck and he will 
 realize the child's predicament. With the arm 
 upon the table there can be no writing accom- 
 plished unless the head is canted to the left, the 
 body also, the paper placed askew, the feet or 
 one foot thrust out to lessen the strain and 
 wrenching of the spine, the pen held at a re- 
 lated abnormal angle, and the hand gripping the 
 holder in a distorted way. (Fig. 2.) All this, 
 that the right eye may have an unimpeded view 
 of the space in which the letters are being 
 formed. Think of the millions of morbidly 
 raised right shoulders, the millions of necks 
 and backs thus wrenched, with all the resultant 
 disease, and during the last 400 years! And 
 still going on ! 
 
 Most school desks are without lateral space 
 to the right in which the paper may be placed 
 opposite the right shoulder when the body and 
 head are erect and squarely placed in front of 
 the desk, and not as now in front of the face 
 or chest. This lack of lateral space to the right 
 has always been the unrealized need, and upon 
 securing it the complete establishing of the 
 vertical style of handwriting will depend, as 
 
 also the rescue of the child from the bad post- 
 170 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 ures and ill-healtli caused by the diabolic head- 
 tilting, right-shoulder-elevating, eye-ruining, 
 body-bending, pelvis-cramping, spine-twisting, 
 scoliosis-provoking postures, which have come 
 down to our times. It will be useless to demand 
 of the child that he shall write vertically, sit 
 vertically, place the paper squarely and not 
 askew, and opposite the median line of the body. 
 No human being can write in that way unless 
 the penholder is held with the tip directed 
 toward the northeast, or upper right corner of 
 the paper (Fig. 9), or even toward the north, 
 all sure to produce writer's cramp, or other evil 
 results in a short time.* In former times, as 
 we know, the children were crowded together 
 side by side so that it was impossible to place 
 
 * Some time after these words were in type, a striking 
 confirmation was found in an article published without any 
 knowledge of my work. I quote the paragraph : 
 
 "One thing, however, has been much impressed upon me, 
 and that is that those who are normally lefthanded and are 
 taught to write with their right hand, suffer from writer's 
 cramp much more readily than normally righthanded indi- 
 viduals. It would seem as though nature were taking her 
 revenge for an interference with her original plan, for the 
 man is right-brained and should not be compelled to use his 
 right hand for a work requiring so much coordination as does 
 writing." ("Some So-called Eheumatisms," J. J. Walsh, 
 Medical News, February 18, 1905.) 
 
 171 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the paper opposite the righthand side of the 
 body and keep the body and head erect. The 
 high desk united to compel the arm to be rested 
 upon the desk, the right side to be turned 
 toward it, the left side away from it, the head 
 and body bent to the left in order to gain a 
 clear view of the writing space of the pen-point 
 with the dominant eye. Even the flat desk or 
 table co-operated to produce the resultant bad 
 posture and the slanted chirography. 
 
 In all lefthanded writers the foregoing fac- 
 tors and results are reversed, and the writing 
 is back handed, or slanted to the left. (Fig. 14.) 
 
 There has also been much error in the state- 
 ments made as to the history of slanted hand- 
 writing. The superb History of the Art of 
 Writing, by Dr. Henry Smith Williams, gives 
 an illuminating series of examples which show 
 that the slanted handwriting appeared much 
 earlier than has been supposed. Despite the 
 high-pitched slope of the desks of the profes- 
 sional and more learned scribes, and also not- 
 withstanding the dictation of the original 
 vertical engraved, etched, or painted patterns, 
 the slanted style appears throughout the Middle 
 Ages, as the necessary result of the writing 
 
 172 
 
i '% 
 
 KA->f 
 
 Fig. 14— All malpostures are reversed by left-handed writers, and, 
 this particular patient gained a better view, in his habitual writing, 
 by holding the penholder as pictured. 
 

 r 
 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 posture consequent upon the flat table, etc. 
 Even in A. D. 93, the letters of a Greek MS. 
 plainly lean to the right, and in a cursive Latin 
 imperial rescript of the Fifth Century the slope 
 is 15°. In a grant to the Church of Ravenna 
 of the Seventh Century, the right oblique slant 
 is 10° or more, and even in Magna Charta all 
 letters lean to the right somewhat. Examples 
 of similar slanting are found in the handwriting 
 of Michael Angelo, Macchiavelli, Ariosto, 
 Tasso, Luther, Shakespeare, Bacon, Lope de 
 Vega, Milton, Locke, Leibnitz, Johnson, etc. 
 Montaigne, Spencer, Galileo, Corneille, Addi- 
 son, Pope, Newton, Voltaire slanted their letters 
 to about the same extent as is now customary. 
 Dante, Piers Ploughman, and others, wrote the 
 vertical hand. Goethe leaned his letters ex- 
 tremely, Schiller less so, while Tennyson's were 
 nearly vertical. Thackeray's were absolutely 
 upright. Of the signers of the American Decla- 
 ration, only one is in vertical letters. Long- 
 fellow wrote a ''backhand," and in a MS. of 
 the Tenth Century the letters also lean to the 
 left, as do MSS. of Henry II and Richard I. In 
 King John's Charter the letters are generally 
 upright, although many letters slant to the left, 
 
 173 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 especially lower case d, and capital D. Of 
 course the best writers and penmen were usually 
 intelligent, and wrote more nearly correctly, i.e., 
 verticallv, while the writers of the lower and 
 commercial classes illustrate the degeneracy 
 which quickly overcame the cursive style of 
 writing. In general, the older and more im- 
 
 jIou>&ui A(mu mt'OonactU- G^me^acvu/tuc^, — emaS uw/ruvo' any t/ctA 
 
 Fig. 15 — The older the style of writing, the more perpendicular or 
 vertical the letters ; the later and more cursive, the more slanted be- 
 come the letters, even in the same document — e. g. The Declaration 
 of Independence. 
 
 portant styles of headings, those in capitals, 
 etc., were upright, while the less important and 
 the body of the writing showed the inevitable 
 leaning that came with crowding, and cursive 
 writing. An instance of this is our own Decla- 
 ration of Independence, a few lines of which 
 next to each other I reproduce. (Fig. 15.) 
 
 174 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 Malposture Not the Cause of Myopia. — In 
 almost all the discussion as to school-desks, 
 especially that originating in Europe, there is 
 much said about the influence of malposture in 
 producing myopia, and it is largely twaddle. 
 The tremendous gathering of statistics and the 
 thoughtless ascription of the truly tragic in- 
 crease of myopia to malposture in study and 
 writing are essentially wide of the mark. Some 
 accidental, incidental, and subordinate influence 
 is, indeed, to be ascribed to the malposture 
 criticised. Kotelmann's pages concerning 
 myopia are, for instance, wholly misleading, 
 and utterly ignore the real cause — which is 
 the noncorrection of ametropia, and espe- 
 cially of astigTQatism. In Germany, the 
 motherland of myopia, there is no scientific cor- 
 rection of ametropia. The very simplest and 
 most fundamental conditions of accuracy are 
 wilfully or ignorantly unnoticed, and the ocular, 
 nervous, and nutritional systems are hopelessly 
 ruined and by wholesale. With one splendid 
 exception our American students of the sub- 
 ject have usually adopted the European 
 blunder, and for a hundred years we shall 
 
 doubtless have the empty echoings of the Euro- 
 
 175 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 pean nonsense as to school desks and myopia. 
 In an article (published in the Klin.Monatshl. 
 f. Augenheilkunde, July, 1904, and translated in 
 the Annals of Ophthalmology, January, 1905), 
 Dr. Liebreich lends his authority to the error 
 that myopia is caused by the combined action of 
 too strong convergence and too great an accom- 
 modation tension, quoting the investigations of 
 Cohen, Hersing, Seggel, and others. This in- 
 version of cause and effect does not prevent 
 the true statement that 'Hhrough the too near 
 approach of the head to the table, the normal 
 curvature of the spinal column is increased and 
 by simultaneous rotation of the head and body 
 lateral curvature ensues." Of course, all such 
 statements and explanations miss the causes of 
 the cause which are the action of astigmatism 
 in producing myopia, its effect in compelling 
 parallelism of the axes of the astigmatism 
 and of the written lines on the paper, and the 
 more fundamental necessity of binocular vision 
 of the writing-field. Scholder also says that 
 myopia is produced by getting the eyes too near 
 the paper, because, he says, the more the head 
 and body are depressed and thus myopia is pro- 
 duced. But what is the causa causans he never 
 
 176 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 asks. Why the skewing of the paper I In 
 SehoJder's table of the increase of scoliotics in 
 the grades of the Lausanne schools he notes in 
 an added column the increase of myopia, as 
 follows : 
 
 Scoliotics Myopes 
 
 percent percent 
 
 First grade 8.7 3. 
 
 Second grade 18.2 4.5 
 
 Third grade 19.2 5.2 
 
 Fourth gi-ade 27.2 6. 
 
 Fifth grade 28.3 8.5 
 
 Sixth grade 32.4 13.7 
 
 Seventh grade 31. 19.4 
 
 If the author had scrutinizingly asked himself 
 why the increase of scoliosis is suddenly 
 stopped and decreased at about 14 years of age, 
 and why the rate of myopia at the same time is 
 suddenly increased, he might have seen a sug- 
 gestion of the cause of myopia. In Dr. S. D. 
 Eisley's magnificent article (Norris and Oliver: 
 "System of Diseases of the Eye," Vol. II.) there 
 is a clear understanding and statement of the 
 problem of myopia. Myopia is not due to the 
 bad desk and bad posture, but to the bad or 
 absent spectacles. (I differ from Dr. Risley in 
 one minor points — the astigmatism is not only 
 'Uhe turnstile," but the path, road, and continu- 
 
 12 177 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 ance of the road itself, which leads to the bog of 
 myopia.) If every school trustee, pedagog, 
 physician, and hygienist would read every word 
 of Dr. Risley's article five times a year, one of 
 the greatest afflictions of mankind might be 
 obviated. Unfortunately, it is buried from all 
 but ophthalmologists, and the majority of these 
 care too little for this revolutionizing truth. 
 
 The remarkable success of all the European 
 investigations in not seeing the cause of myopia 
 is a painful illustration of the difficulties in 
 the way of scientific and medical progress. 
 Jaeger, Ely, and Horstmann were approaching 
 the true explanation, in their work leading to 
 the measurements of the anteroposterior diam- 
 eter of hyperopic and myopic eyes ; by Arlt and 
 Donders, the latter emphasizing the role of pre- 
 disposition — that easy, old and still popular 
 word to cover ignorance of the real and active 
 pathogenic factor. Dobrowoesky and Erisman 
 charged the accommodation with the production 
 of myopia, while Forster thought it was due to 
 convergence. Mauthner ascribes the leading 
 role to spasm of the ciliary muscles, while Still- 
 ing threw the responsibility upon the obliques 
 and the shape of the orbit — a view opposed by 
 
 178 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 I 
 
 Schmidt-Rimpler and Seggel. Hasner and 
 Weiss contended that myopia is caused by a 
 too short optic nerve, and Schnabel and Herrn- 
 heiser by a lessened resistance of the sclerotic. 
 It remained for an American oculist to discover 
 the true etiology which is to-day as much 
 ignored by European oculists and school 
 hygienists as if it had been made this morning 
 instead of 38 years ago. In 1867, and again in 
 1871, Dr. John Green of St. Louis set forth 
 the explanation, and a few years later Dr. S. D. 
 Eisley of Philadelphia demonstrated it by 
 studies of school children's eyes in epoch- 
 making papers, which, within the next genera- 
 tion or two may begin to make the epoch. 
 
 The Evils of Eyestrain. — In all of the fore- 
 going there have been considered only the chil- 
 dren, students, and writers who had eyes so 
 near normality as regards ametropia that they 
 had no severe eyestrain or morbid reflexes 
 from use of the eyes in a natural way, or even in 
 the unnatural ways begotten by morbid post- 
 ures ; but unnatural posture produces unnatural 
 ocular function, and besides this, from 25 per- 
 cent to 50 percent of all civilized persons have 
 eyestrain or hurtful use of ametropic eyes. The 
 
 179 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 amount of harm done the eyes, the neurologic 
 mechanism, the digestive and assimilative sys- 
 tems depends upon three things : the kind and 
 the degree of the ametropia; the amount of 
 reading, and especially of writing, done; the 
 susceptibility of the patient, the general vital- 
 ity, intercurrent diseases, etc. It has been 
 found that from 50 percent to 64 percent of 
 school children are sickly or below a desirable 
 norm of health. I do not think it is an exag- 
 geration to say that the ills of 50 percent of 
 these hygienically subnormal children and stu- 
 dents are due to the morbid postures compelled 
 by the present false methods of writing and 
 reading. Of the remaining 50 percent, a full 
 half are directly caused by the eyestrain of 
 ametropic eyes. Headache, "weak eyes," mi- 
 graine, anorexia, dyspepsia, and many types of 
 denutrition, spinal curvature, insomnia, ''nerv- 
 ousness," many cases of chorea and epilepsy, 
 despondency and frequent psychic disorders, 
 truancy, immorality, etc., almost any form or 
 kind of functional disease — all these, and the 
 denutrition that fallows the ground for the in- 
 coming of infectious and terminal diseases — all 
 of these are, or may be, the clear consequences 
 
 180 
 
THE WRITING POSTURE 
 
 of eyestrain. Only proper and scientific spec- 
 tacles can extinguish these evils. But without 
 glasses they are tremendously increased and 
 intensified by the morbidities of posture en- 
 gendered by the present school-desks and 
 methods of writing and reading. A revolution 
 is demanded by an enlightened hygiene in school 
 furniture and methods of writing and study. 
 It is the most profound and crying reform of 
 the day, a matter of national and evolutional 
 importance almost overtopping all others. 
 
 Eead the clinical biographies of the great suf- 
 ferers from eyestrain, and note how intolerable 
 and impossible writing becomes. A thousand 
 quotations from their biographies and letters 
 might be made showing that suffering of the 
 most varied and subtle kinds follows directly 
 upon use of the eyes especially in writing, and 
 is at once relieved with cessation of writing and 
 reading. The abnormal and morbid postures 
 caused by nonunderstanding of the optic prob- 
 lems in writing add enormously to the pre-exist- 
 ing and attendant eyestrain. 
 
 181 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PATHOLOGIC EESULTS OF KIGHTEYEDNESS AND 
 
 LEFTEYEDNESS.* 
 
 A LITTLE observation and a few tests will 
 show that, with some exceptions, to be noted 
 later, the righthanded person is also righteyed ; 
 and the lefthanded is lefteyed. That is to say, 
 there is, in the righthanded, the same habitual 
 and unconscious choice of the image of the right 
 eye for the more expert and important tasks, 
 just as the right hand is chosen for those func- 
 tions in skilled work. A righthanded hunter 
 places his gun against the right shoulder be- 
 cause he can sight it with the right better than 
 the left eye. The righthanded person, in play- 
 ing the violin, violoncello, etc., is forced to use 
 the left hand for the more expert task, because 
 he thus sees the fingers and the neck of the 
 instrument without foreshortening and better 
 than he could if the fingering were done with 
 the right hand. All actions, in fact, are de- 
 
 * American Ophthalmological Society, 1904; Ophthalmology, 
 October, 1904; "Biographic Clinics," Vol. iii. 
 
 182 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 termined by the fundamental necessity that 
 accurate vision shall precede all action, and 
 vision is more accurate with the habitually 
 exercised eye, just as manual function is more 
 expert and reliable with the hand most exer- 
 cised in a special kind of work. 
 
 A little closer observation soon demonstrates 
 that not only is the righthanded also righteyed, 
 but that he is usually rightfooted, and right- 
 eared. This is equivalent to saying that a per- 
 son is either dextroexpert, generally, as to ear, 
 eye, hand, and foot, or else he is sinistroexpert. 
 There must manifestly be a unity in the co-ordi- 
 nations of all acts, and such co-ordinations 
 would evidently be better with a habitual one- 
 sided similarity of execution running through all 
 kinds of action, so that there would be no inde- 
 cision in rapid and dangerous acts. The unity 
 and the resultant promptness and accuracy of 
 all motions is thus enhanced by a synchronous 
 dextroexpertness or sinistroexpertness. The 
 mixed type, illustrated by the so-called ambi- 
 dextrous, would place the organism at a 
 wretched disadvantage in the struggle for ex- 
 istence, and in the social struggle of the highest 
 types of civilized life. 
 
 183 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 The underlying and long forerunning cause, 
 however, of the co-ordination of dextral acts, or 
 of sinistral ones, lies in the necessity of the 
 localization of the organ of speech in one or in 
 the other side of the cerebrum. As it is a 
 single and not a dual function, its organ can be 
 only in one place. Pathology has proved what 
 physiology pointed out, that in the righthanded 
 the speech-center is in the left side of the brain, 
 and in the lefthanded it is in the right side. 
 Moreover, the intellectual act of writing de- 
 velops the speech-center on the side opposite to 
 the writing hand. The history of cases with 
 tuniors and paralyses has settled this question 
 beyond controversy. 
 
 The speech-center may be looked on as the 
 organ through which intellectual judgment and 
 decision issues in determination and act. The 
 spoken and written word is the most intimate 
 act of the mind, its irrevocable and immediate 
 exponent. Prior to all judgment and decision, 
 vision must give the data. Intellect is, in fact, 
 the product of vision, and all mental symbols, 
 the letters of the alphabet themselves, are but 
 modified visual images. The thing seen is thus 
 worked into judgment, and by the third com- 
 
 184 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 ponent of human action, motion, is wrought 
 into completed function. ^Vision, judgment, 
 act, are thus the unexceptional conditions of 
 human activity and validity. It is at once plain 
 that if the centers which intermediate these 
 three functions are on one side of the brain, in 
 contiguity, and closely united by many inter- 
 central fibers, the resultant act will be more 
 accurate and rapid than if one or two of the 
 centers are in the opposite side of the brain. 
 The commissural fibers between the two cere- 
 bral hemispheres would be fewer and longer, 
 and the co-ordination less clear, sharp and cer- 
 tain. This is the neurologic basis for a common 
 dextrality or a common sinistrality of function 
 in one individual, and it completely demolishes 
 the foolish contention of those who would vainly 
 educate the six percent of lefthanded children to 
 be ambidextrous. There never was an ambi- 
 dextrous person, but there has been produced 
 much misery by the foolish attempt to create 
 ambidexterity^ 
 
 If by ocular disease, ametropia, accident, etc., 
 the righthanded are compelled to be lefteyed, 
 the pathologic results which may flow from this 
 interference, or reversal, of the natural order, 
 
 185 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 become of exceptional interest to the ophthal- 
 mologist. That these pathologic results exist I 
 have no doubt, and have repeatedly demon- 
 strated in the persons of actual patients. I sus- 
 pect that they exist in at least ten percent of all 
 patients, and no case whatever can be treated 
 whoUj^ irrespective of the fact of righteyed or 
 lefteyed function. 
 
 For purposes of naming and clarifying the 
 ideas to be presented, let us call the right eye of 
 righthanded persons, and the left eye of left- 
 handed persons, the dominant eye. The caution 
 must be emphasized that the hand which does 
 the writing unconsciously or preferentially 
 dictates the location of the speech-center, and 
 the true condition of righthandedness or left- 
 handedness. 
 
 It hardly needs the saying that the accidents 
 of ocular diseases, keratitis, fundus lesions, 
 cataract, high ametropia, heterophoria, ambly- 
 opia, etc., may put out of function, or threaten 
 to do so, the primary — that is, the naturally, 
 logically and neurologically — dominant eye, and 
 thus the eye of the other side must be used as 
 a makeshift and educated to become the sec- 
 ondarily dominant one. The older the age at 
 
 186 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 which this occurs the greater the difficulty, the 
 more of a tragedy will it be to the patient. 
 There arise a hundred problems. I shall here 
 allude, and most briefly, to but a few of these: 
 
 1. In all operative procedures there should 
 be an exceptional striving to save the dominant 
 eye. I do not believe in operations for this 
 purpose, but if only one eye can be straightened 
 and made functional in strabismus, by all odds 
 let it be the dominant one. The strabismus of 
 a naturally dominant eye will be more easily 
 cured than that of the nondominant one. In 
 double convergent squint the dominant eye 
 should be the one first chosen to save. In 
 certain cases of cataract extraction a similar 
 rule should be followed. 
 
 2. In inflammatory diseases there should be 
 the same solicitude, when choice, as frequently, 
 is possible, to preserve the best function in the 
 dominant eye. 
 
 3. The supreme value of the dominant eye 
 makes it highly important that ametropia shall 
 be corrected at the earliest day and year pos- 
 sible. Every month that amblyopia, hetero- 
 phoria, or strabismus increases in that eye, 
 makes the life history and struggle of that child 
 
 187 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 a diiferent and a more difficult one. Right- 
 handedness, or its opi^osite, is pronounced in 
 children of less than a year, and the location 
 of the speech-center is being fixed rapidly, and 
 often unchangeably, at two and three years of 
 age. 
 
 4. If saving of the naturally dominant eye is 
 impossible in the young child, and its fellow 
 must be secondarily educated into dominancy, 
 it becomes a question if the child should not 
 also be taught to write, eat, etc., with the cor- 
 responding hand. 
 
 5. In the adult the dominant eye I have found 
 will preserve its dominancy despite a consider- 
 ably higher degree of amblyopia, ametropia, 
 etc., than that of its fellow. But it is evident 
 that there must be a limit. I doubt if the natu- 
 rally dominant eye would retain its dominancy 
 if it had, say, an acuteness of only 20/50 while 
 the vision of the other was normal. This fact 
 arouses a number of queries in the mind of the 
 refractionist. One of these would refer to the 
 inadvisability of giving the nondominant eye a 
 greatly superior acuteness of vision by means 
 of glasses. In an adult such a sudden change, 
 even reversal, in the habits of part of a lifetime 
 
 188 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 might be brought about that the spectacles 
 would not be tolerated, and failures of varied 
 kinds ensue. The patient would then have a 
 life handicap that would greatly lessen his per- 
 sonal validity and happiness. 
 
 6. An axis of astigmatism in the dominant 
 eye from 10° to 20° to either side of 90° or 180°, 
 while the axis in the fellow eye remains normal 
 or unsymmetric, produces head-tilting; sym- 
 metric axes produce no head-tilting. In the 
 few months after I discovered this law I found 
 in the ordinary run of office practice over 30 
 cases of head-tilting. The stupid error I had 
 made all my life was to allow these patients to 
 cant the head during the refraction testing. In 
 this way I had failed to find how large is the 
 number of righthanded patients who have axes 
 of astigmatism of the right eye from 10° to 20° 
 to one side of 90° or 180°. And never before 
 this had I thought of the necessity of inquiring 
 as to righthandedness in patients having these 
 slightly unsymmetric axes of astigmatism. It 
 is evident that an axis in the dominant eye only 
 5° to one side of 90° or 180° would hardly 
 produce a noticeable tilt of the head, or might 
 possibly be compensated for by the rotation of 
 
 189 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 the eyeball itself. It is possible that some types 
 of heterophoria, and especially cyclophoria, 
 may be explained as arising from this compen- 
 sation of the ocular structures instead of pro- 
 ducing the tilt or cant of the head. It also 
 seems possible that this compensatory twist of 
 the eyeball in the orbit may possibly cause a 
 compensatory twist of the optic nerve, and 
 perhaps certain other diseases of the papilla 
 and retina. After prescription of proper cor- 
 recting glasses it would be natural to find before 
 long a secondary change of axis resulting from 
 the rectification of the abnormal head-tilt, or 
 ocular twist. Such patients must be kept under 
 continuous and repeated observation. 
 
 If the axis of astigmatism of the dominant 
 eye is about 75° or 165°, it is evident that, if the 
 nondominant eye is unsymmetric, the head must 
 be tilted to the right in order to bring the false 
 axis into line with the vertical lines of print, 
 trees, houses, wall paper, doors, etc. 
 
 If the axis of astigmatism of the dominant 
 eye is about 105° or 15,° compensatory tilt of 
 the head must be to the left. Greater variations 
 of the axis than 20° would hardly be compen- 
 sated for by head-tilting, but would either 
 
 190 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 produce amblyopia, a transfer of dominancy to 
 the other eye, or else some other pathologic 
 consequence equally harmful to action and life. 
 The axis of the largest number of head-tilters 
 is 75° in the right eye, and thus the majority 
 tilt the head to the right. 
 
 7. Among the 30 or more head-tilters I have 
 found, in the few months mentioned, about a 
 dozen with resultant spinal curvature or scolio- 
 sis. The fact was usually unsuspected by the 
 patient, the parent, and the attending general 
 physician. I sometimes had difficulty in getting 
 consent that an expert orthopedic surgeon 
 should verify the diagnosis. A report of these 
 cases, the nature of the compensatory spinal 
 curvature, and the cure by glasses alone, or by 
 glasses and orthopedic help, will be published 
 later. It is needless to add that the method 
 of production of scoliosis resulting from an 
 enforced and habitual abnormal position of the 
 head is well understood by orthopedic surgeons. 
 Habitual carrying forward, for instance, of the 
 hearing ear in case of unilateral deafness will 
 result in scoliosis. There are undoubtedly 
 thousands of children with curved spinal col- 
 umns in the United States whose spinal disease 
 
 191 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 is due to a slightly aberrant axis of astigmatism. 
 
 8. An ametropia in the nondominant eye 
 which tends to throw it out of function is much 
 more likely to result in malfunction, nonfunc- 
 tion, and disease of that eye than would be the 
 case in the dominant eye. Many practical sug- 
 gestions and rules result from this fact both in 
 refraction work and in the management of 
 inflammatory diseases. In amblyopiatrics, for 
 instance, it is perhaps as well not to strive to 
 give the nondominant eye an exceptional, or 
 even an equal, acuteness of vision. Nature will 
 not respond to the attempt so willingly as in a 
 similar attempt with the dominant eye. 
 
 9. The failure to diagnose the unsymmetric 
 variation of axis of the dominant eye will, of 
 course, result in the noncure of the reflexes 
 which are caused by eyestrain. This is so well 
 established that it may serve as a reason for 
 re-examination of the cases in which, in the past, 
 there has not been perfect relief of patients 
 with general ill health, migraine, dyspepsia, 
 headache, neurasthenia, insomnia, melancholy, 
 etc., probably due to eyestrain. Not seldom the 
 change of axis found to exist when the refrac- 
 tion test is made with the head accurately erect 
 
 192 
 
RIGHTEYEDNESS AND LEFTEYEDNESS 
 
 will at once bring astonishing and brilliant re- 
 lief in many forms of inveterate systemic func- 
 tional disease.* 
 
 POSTSCEIPT. 
 
 After the foregoing paper had been read at 
 Atlantic City, Dr. Peter N. Callan said to me 
 that the suggestion of righteyedness had also 
 come to him, and he had asked the question in 
 the Medical Record of April 2, 1881. Con- 
 firmation of the fact had been found in the 
 examination of the records of more than 1,000 
 of the private patients of Dr. H. D. Noyes in 
 whom each eye had been carefully examined 
 and the vision and refraction noted. The gen- 
 eral results were that when myopia existed there 
 
 * A corollary of the discovery of the cause of so many cases 
 of tilted heads is suggested. Beside the thousand vertical 
 and horizontal objects that demand relief of astigmatism, or 
 its placing at axes 90° or 180°, the predominant cause in 
 civilization is the shape of the letters of the printed page. 
 As a rule, these are made up chiefly of lines at axis 90°, 
 supplemented by a few at 180°, and a less number of curves 
 and of oblique axes, at about 60° or 70°, or, conversely, at 120° 
 or 130°. It is these last vphich should be eliminated when 
 it is possible, and in all but a few letters this is possible, 
 the exceptions (K, V, X, Z) being relatively unimportant. 
 The lower case of small letters could be modified in shape to 
 correspond to these. The lesson as to vertical and slanted 
 handwriting at school is equally plain. 
 
 13 193 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 was a higher degree in the right than in the left 
 eye, and when hyperopia was present there was 
 a less degree in the right than in the left. In 
 the hyperopia cases the vision was more acute 
 in the right than in the left, and in the myopic 
 the vision was almost the same in each eye, 
 taking all degrees into consideration. Dr. 
 Callan drew the conclusion ''that with bi- 
 nocular vision we use one eye more than its 
 fellow — that one being generally the right eye. ' ' 
 This quick confirmation of the theory of dextro- 
 cularity was unexpected, and suggests a number 
 of valuable and practical rules in refraction 
 work, in the care of the eyes of school children, 
 students, etc. 
 
 There are indirectly further proofs of the 
 theory to be found in the ingenious and instruc- 
 tive paper of Dr. Wheelock Eider, on "Unila- 
 teral Winking," published in Transactions of 
 the American Ophthalmological Society, 1898, 
 to which my attention was kindly directed by 
 the author, in the discussion of my paper, and 
 which had also escaped my notice. 
 
 194 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A patient's struggle for right-eye function.* 
 
 In the May, 1906, issue of American Medicine 
 1 reported the case of a patient, a physician, 
 who had suffered atrociously for 30 years. His 
 single disease had been eyestrain, at least up to 
 the time when insane surgery had not added its 
 possible of injury and insult to the man's 
 already overgreat misery. This outrage con- 
 sisted in tearing out the four healthy trunks of 
 the infraorbital and supraorbital nerves. So 
 blunderful was the operator, qua surgeon, that 
 he had destroyed the function of the levator, 
 the motor nerve raising the right eyelid, and 
 the man had complete ptosis of this lid. As I 
 suggested in my former report, one could hope 
 for little relief when terrible eyestrain and 
 surgery had done their worst. I expected to 
 do so little toward cure, or even relief, that I 
 thought the case history at an end and therefore 
 reported it as if complete. And, as I said, one 
 of the most hopeless of conditions had been 
 
 ^ 
 
 * American Medicine, April, 1907. 
 
 195 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 needlessly added in the paralytic ptosis of the 
 right or dominant eye. This, in a righthanded 
 man of 38, must prove a great calamity by sud- 
 denly throwing into the adult mechanism of 
 dextroexpertness the morbid faculty of absolute 
 lefteyedness. 
 
 Following the wearing of spectacles correct- 
 ing the patient's ametropia there was such 
 great relief of the pain, neuralgia, etc., that 
 there was danger of forgetting the morbid left- 
 eyedness caused by the ptosis. Within a short 
 time the complaints began returning, but they 
 were noticeably vague. Every former one had 
 greatly lessened or disappeared but there was 
 pain in the antrum and other indefinite trouble 
 seemingly as unendurable as before. I begged 
 that the long journey to visit me should again 
 be made. 
 
 When the patient came it was soon apparent 
 that the chief source of the present afflictions 
 was that the right eye was shut out from its 
 normal function. The perfect proofs of this 
 were the following: 
 
 1. Although there was only a narrow slit 
 between the lids a glimpse could be obtained of 
 the book or of more distant objects by throwing 
 
 196 
 
A STRUGGLE FOR RIGHT-EYE FUNCTION 
 
 the head far backward; the patient was thus 
 ignoring the sound left eye whose vision was 
 perfect, and he was going about with his head 
 bent back in an extreme and torturing manner 
 in order to gain a glimpse of objects with the 
 preferred right eye. 
 
 2. To gain some relief from the suffering in 
 the neck, etc., from this most unnatural posture, 
 the patient had to bend the head forward fre- 
 quently, and thus there was an incessant rock- 
 ing of the head far backward and then forward. 
 
 3. Vision was decreasing in acuteness in both 
 eyes, and both for distant objects and in read- 
 ing. Halos and dark spots in the field of vision 
 were appearing, and worrying the patient, 
 ocularly and mentally. 
 
 4. The pupil of the left eye was becoming 
 continuously dilated and only partly responsive 
 to light and accommodation. 
 
 5. Both eyes, especially as to lids and con- 
 junctiva were becoming morbidly congested and 
 even inflamed. 
 
 6. Great drowsiness, complaints of being 
 tired out, etc., were growing worse. The mind 
 was incapable of work, and there was a dull 
 and lethargic condition very noticeable. 
 
 197 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 7. The morbid efforts to raise the right lid 
 were wearisome and irritating. 
 
 8. Most important of all was the continual 
 shutting of the normal left eye and with morbid 
 effort, reading with the right eye. 
 
 There was no doubt in my mind that the 
 struggle for righteyedness was at the bottom of 
 all the mischief and that unless the right eye 
 could be got into function, life-wreck was im- 
 minent. The traumatic ptosis must be done 
 away with! 
 
 One of our most experienced ophthalmic sur- 
 geons was consulted, and after thorough study 
 he refused to operate. He probably had no 
 sympathy with my theory of righteyedness. 
 He did not see why the left eye should not take 
 up the sole function of vision, feared the opera- 
 tion might not be successful, etc. As I believed 
 the man's life depended upon re-establishing the 
 function of the right eye, I took the patient to 
 another surgeon. Dr. Geo. C. Harlan, of Phila- 
 delphia. He consented to operate. Within a 
 week the dominancy of the function of the right 
 eye was restored, and at once all the symptoms 
 enumerated above disappeared. From the last 
 letter dated March 11, 1907, 1 quote : 
 
 198 
 
A STRUGGLE FOR RIGHT-EYE FUNCTION 
 
 "I have been more busy than in years, and am in the 
 best condition. I have no trouble now, and read all that I 
 have a chance to. The lid is up for all practical purposes, 
 but for long- distance vision I tilt the head backward a 
 little. If the other eye were gone I could get on well. 
 There are no spots or halos before the eyes, no cloudiness, 
 etc. I have no pain except from colds, or from sneez- 
 ing. The antrum trouble is well. I feel like a king and 
 enjoy my work. You have been the best friend I ever had. 
 I am interested in your fight. I am going to read a paper 
 on eyestrain before the next meeting of our State Medical 
 Society." 
 
 199 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE NOMENCLATURE OF DEXTRAL, SINISTRAL, AND 
 ATTENTIONAL ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS.* 
 
 In the Popular Science Monthly, August, 
 1904 (republished in Biographic Clinics, Vol. 
 III.), I made some suggestions as to the nomen- 
 clature of the organs and functions pertaining 
 to righthandedness, lefthandedness, etc. After 
 a more extended study and experience of the 
 subject I recognize that I made some errors and 
 more omissions, and these I may now correct. 
 The terms righthanded and lefthanded are so 
 firmly fixed in the language, and so recognized 
 as expressing the unconscious choice and su- 
 perior expertness of one or the other hand for 
 certain tasks, that it is useless to attempt put- 
 ting them aside for more accurate words. Es- 
 tablished usage and habit make language and 
 govern the world. "Right-handed," "left- 
 handed," etc., imply nothing of expertness, etc., 
 literally, but usage has put such meanings into 
 them. Terms merely localizing the organs 
 
 Popular Science Monthly, November 1, 1907. 
 
 200 
 
NOMENCLATURE 
 
 without added significance must therefore be 
 devised, e.g., dextral, sinistral, dextromanual, 
 d,extrocular, and all the rest. To extend the 
 idea of expertness to the corresponding organs, 
 righteyed, lefteyed, rightfooted, righteared, etc., 
 may be used after the analogy of righthanded. 
 The words ambidextral and ambidexterity 
 should never be used by sensible persons. No 
 one has yet existed with two dextral hands ; no 
 lefthanded person has ever been trained to have 
 an equal proficiency or expertness of each hand 
 for all tasks ; it would be most undesirable and 
 wasteful of life to have such equal expertness ; 
 all or most such attempted training results in 
 unhappiness, confusion, inexpertness and dis- 
 ease. The righthanded, according to the crazy 
 theory, should be trained to an equal and 
 ludicrous sinistromanual expertness, etc.; the 
 violinist should bow or finger equally expertly 
 with each hand; the pianist play upon a re- 
 versed keyboard, the base notes to the right, 
 half the time ; soldiers should carry their guns 
 and swords half the time in the left hand, step 
 off with the right foot first on alternate days ; 
 and all sewing, writing, use of the knife and 
 
 201 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 fork, handshaking, etc., done alternately with 
 the sinistral and the dextral hands, etc. 
 
 As to righteyedness, lefteyedness, etc., there 
 is a world of new facts coming to light of pro- 
 found importance, medically, surgically, so- 
 cially, and especially to the person abnormal in 
 these respects. In practical ophthalmology, 
 ''dominance" of the dextral eye in the right- 
 handed, and the preservation of it, or re-estah- 
 lishment of it when lost {vice versa in the case 
 of the lefthanded), is of vast import, possibly 
 to the life of many individuals. With divided 
 or alternate dominance one of my patients was 
 constantly making mistakes, confused, running 
 into objects, steering his automobile into col- 
 lisions, etc. (The tests are many and easily 
 made : For instance, looking through the held- 
 up pencil or finger at the opposite wall, an 
 image, one image, of the pencil is seen by the 
 dominant eye^ — the dextral, of course, normally, 
 in the righthanded, the sinistral in the left- 
 handed. If the dextral is the dominant eye, 
 then by putting something over the left, the 
 image will not be displaced; if the dextral eye 
 is shut off, the image of the pencil will "jump" 
 to the right. If the sinistral is the dominant 
 
 202 
 
NOMENCLATURE 
 
 eye, the reverse will take place.) If two images 
 are seen, tlien the person has divided dominance 
 or equidominance, and he is a patient, having 
 confusions of mind and action which may cause 
 accidents at any time, and which must decidedly 
 abnormalize him in many ways. Probably 
 equidominance is a half-way stage of the change 
 from normal to reversed dominancy. It would 
 be better that the righthanded should have the 
 sinistral eye dominant {vice versa in the left- 
 handed) than that he should have equidomi- 
 nance. I have had four patients reaching 
 middle adult life who used one hyperopic eye 
 solely for distance-vision {i.e., for objects over 
 about two feet away), and the other myopic eye 
 solely for all vision in reading, writing, etc. Of 
 course the hyperopic eye in such cases (as in 
 one of my patients), although the left (in a 
 righthanded person), must become the dominant 
 eye, because dominance has existence and use 
 only in distance-seeing. 
 
 The necessity for new terms to designate the 
 states and functions of attention comes to view 
 in the fact that civilization is creating a new 
 sort of consciousness and attention. The old 
 psychology considered that attention or con- 
 
 203 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 sciousness was to be likened to the passing of 
 single grains of sand through the constriction 
 of the hour-glass. That view was largely true, 
 because I believe that attention is genetically 
 and chiefly a product of vision, and that vision 
 of the older and simpler type of eye and mind 
 was indeed that of a continuous linear stream 
 of single images (objects) focused one after 
 another at the macula. But the modern mind 
 (of the great and rapid reader, of the musician, 
 and of men in many trades and callings) is 
 learning to see and know and use many syn- 
 chronous and co-ordinated images, and streams 
 of images, both at and away from the macula. 
 There is a growth and extension of the macular 
 region and of its imaging, one may say, or the 
 power of attention and consciousness is growing 
 more and more able to receive, interpret and 
 control the many streams (which is the same 
 thing as the enlarged stream of sand grains), 
 of images focused in and about the macula. 
 Thus mental largeness, power, attention and 
 consciousness are growing at a great rate in 
 our complex and differentiating civilization, and 
 the old nomenclature based upon the hour-glass 
 comparison is no longer adequate. Especially 
 
 204 
 
NOMENCLATURE 
 
 if is added the marvelous power of the ear, as 
 in the musician, to receive, encompass and be 
 conscious of ten, fifty, or even a hundred 
 streams of discrete synchronous tones. The 
 following terms may therefore be found useful : 
 
 Righthanded.—PYeferr'mg the dextral hand 
 for the more expert or intellectual tasks. 
 Whence righthandedness. 
 
 Lefthanded.—PYeierrmg the sinistral hand 
 for the same tasks. Whence lefthandedness. 
 
 RigMeyed. — Preferring the dextral eye as 
 the dominant one. 
 
 Lefteyed. — Preferring the sinistral eye as the 
 dominant one. 
 
 Right eared. — Preferring the dextral ear as 
 the one with which to hear sounds. 
 
 Lefteared. — Preferring the sinistral ear with 
 which to hear. 
 
 RigJitfooted. — Choosing the dextral foot as 
 the one to guide and base action, from which 
 to spring in beginning to march, in spading, etc. 
 ''Step off with the left foot forward." 
 
 Left footed. — The power is furnished and 
 governed by the sinistral foot. 
 
 Right. — Moral, good, etc. 
 
 Sinister. — Unlucky, gloomy, etc. 
 
 205 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Dexterity. — Expertness, agility, etc. 
 
 Dextrous. — Expert, agile, etc. 
 
 Because of popular usage, the four preceding 
 may retain their vague significance in common 
 speech, but not in science. 
 
 Dextral. — Pertaining to the organs on the 
 right side of the body, regardless of expertness, 
 preference, etc. When facing east the dextral 
 hand is on the south side, the sinistral on the 
 north side. 
 
 Sinistral. — Pertaining to the organs on the 
 left side of the body, regardless of special pref- 
 erence, expertness, etc. 
 
 Dextrality, Sinistrality. — The corresponding 
 abstract qualities, regardless of expertness, etc. 
 
 Dextrad, Sinistrad. — Toward the dextral or 
 sinistral side of the body, respectively. 
 
 Dextromanual, Sinistromanual. — Pertaining, 
 respectively, to the dextral or to the sinistral 
 hand without regard to expertness, etc. 
 
 Dextr ocular, Sinistr ocular. — Pertaining to 
 the eye on the dextral side, or the sinistral side, 
 respectively, regardless of expertness, etc. 
 
 Dextropedal, Sinistropedal. — Pertaining to 
 the feet, in the same way. 
 
 Dextraural, Sinistraural. — Pertaining to the 
 ears, in the same way. 
 
 206 
 
NOMENCLATURE 
 
 Dextrocerebral, Sinistrocerehral. — Located in 
 the right, or the left, cerebral hemisphere, re- 
 spectively. 
 
 Ambidextral, Ambidexterity. — ^Words with- 
 out significance, or existence in fact, ''ghost- 
 words," which should never be used. 
 
 Dominant Eye. — The eye which is uncon- 
 sciously and preferentially chosen to guide de- 
 cision and action. 
 
 Divided Dominance, or Equidominant Eyes. 
 — ^With shared or equal dominance. 
 
 Alternating Dominance of the Eyes. — Domi- 
 nance of one eye at one time or for one function, 
 alternating with that of the fellow for another 
 time or function. 
 
 Reversed Dominance. — The left, because of 
 ametropia, disease, operation, etc., of the right, 
 becoming the dominant eye in the righthanded ; 
 or vice versa in the case of the lefthanded. 
 
 Dextroexpertness. — Conjoint and superior 
 expertness of the dextral sensory and muscular 
 organs of the body; the union of righthanded- 
 ness, righteyedness, rightearedness and right- 
 footedness. The innervational centers of the 
 more expert organs are located in the left side 
 of the brain. 
 
 207 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Sinistroexpertness. — Conjoint and superior 
 expertness of the sinistral sensory and mus- 
 cular organs of the body; the union of left- 
 Iiandedness, lefteyedness, leftearedness, and 
 leftfootedness. The innervational centers of 
 the more expert organs are located in the right 
 half-brain. 
 
 Mixed Dextro sinistral Expertness. — Some of 
 the centers of the more expert organs in con- 
 joint action are located in one, and some in the 
 opposite half-brain. What was once meant by 
 the really meaningless term "ambidexterity," 
 as applied only to the hands. 
 
 Trailing Hand, "The Trailer.'^ — In syn- 
 chronous writing of both hands, that upon 
 which the attention, visual or central, is not 
 fixed. 
 
 Visual Attention. — That existing when the 
 eyes consciously observe a fixed or moving ob- 
 ject ; during the act central or mental attention 
 is fused with it. 
 
 Central Attention. — The 'imagination," or 
 mental remaking, of the image, by the mind or 
 central mechanism when the peripheral visual 
 attention is abrogated. 
 
 Single-stream Visual Attention. — That form 
 
 208 
 
NOMENCLATURE 
 
 of visual attention existing when the eyes fol- 
 low a linear concatenation of single or unitary 
 macular images to the exclusion of all others. 
 
 Single-stream Central Visual Attention. — 
 That when the central visual attention, without 
 objectively forming images, follows the passing 
 of imagined single or unitary images in single 
 file. 
 
 Multiple Synchronous Visual Attention. — 
 That when the attention recognizes two or more 
 discrete sets of retinal images at the same 
 time — as when the musician reads several staffs 
 of music-notes, observes key-boards and pedals, 
 the indications as to stops, tempo, expression, 
 etc. 
 
 Multiple Synchronous Central Visual Atten- 
 tion. — The imagining or mental reproduction of 
 multiple synchronous visual trains without the 
 objectively formed images. 
 
 Single-stream Auditory Attention. — That 
 when a monotone, a sound, or concatenation of 
 single notes or sounds, is listened to, exclusive 
 of others. 
 
 Single-stream Central Auditory Attention. — 
 That without the objective audition. 
 
 Multiple Synchronous Auditory Attention. — 
 
 14 209 
 
RIGHTHANDEDNESS AND LEFTHANDEDNESS 
 
 Two or more synclaronous tones or sounds, or 
 lines of such tones or sounds, are recognized by 
 consciousness, as in the case of the orchestra- 
 leader who gives attention to a large number. 
 
 Compound Synchronous Attention. — In this 
 the consciousness recognizes and correlates or 
 combines multiple streams of synchronous and 
 diverse stimuli, visual, auditory, etc. Illus- 
 trated by expert telegraphers, locomotive en- 
 gineers, musicians, etc., seeing, hearing and 
 feeling consciously at one instant. 
 
 210 
 
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