Beauty culture : a practical handbook on the care of the person, designed for both professional and private use / by William A. Woodbury.

  • Woodbury, William A.
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Beauty culture : a practical handbook on the care of the person, designed for both professional and private use / by William A. Woodbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the amount of mobility of their metacarpal bones on the wrist. Thus the middle finger is the largest, its metacarpal being the most fixed. The forefinger ranks next, its metacarpal being more movable. Then the ring finger and the little finger come next in size and in the mobil- ity of the metacarpal. The thumb, shortest, has its meta- carpal much more movable. “Observe,” says Dr. Humphrey, “that when the fingers and the thumb are spread out, the space between thumb and forefinger is considerably greater than the space between the other fingers. Then, by a slight movement, the thumb takes a position in front of, or opposite to, the fingers. In grasping any substance it has to antagonize the pressure exerted by all the fingers. Hence it needs to be much stronger than they are, and to be wielded by more numerous and powerful muscles.” “The forefinger has the greatest range of independent movement.” Hence it is used to point with (or beckon with), and is called the index or indicator, more com- monly the former. “The ring finger cannot be bent or straightened much without being accompanied in movement by one or both of those next to it. This is partly because the extensor tendon is connected,” says Dr. Humphrey, “by means of a band of fibres with the tendon on either side.” In other words, there is a remnant of the webbing, so curi- ously found still persisting in the toes of the Russians as will be hereafter noted in the discussion of chiropody. This finger with less independence of movement was not chosen on that account, as might be humorously imag- ined, to bear the ring that symbolizes that state in which men and women generally lose their individual mobility, but it was probably selected because the enforced com-
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