The swellings on the palmar faces of the phalanges of the several fingers are also indicative, the ist and 2nd of the thumb respectively, of the logical faculty and of the will; the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of the index finger, of materialism, law and order, idealism; those of the middle finger, humanity, system, intelli gence; of the ring finger, truth, economy, energy; and of the little finger, goodness, prudence, reflectiveness.
Over and above these there are other marks, crosses, triangles, etc., of which more than a hundred have been described and figured by different authors, each with its interpretation; and in addition the back of the hand has its ridges. The Chinese com bine podoscopy with chiromancy.
To the anatomist the roughnesses of the palm are of consider able interest. The folds are so disposed that the thick skin shall be capable of bending in grasping, while at the same time it re quires to be tightly bound down to the skeleton of the hand, else the slipping of the skin would lead to insecurity of prehension, as the quilting or buttoning down of the covers of furniture by upholsterers keeps them from slipping. For this purpose the skin is tied by connecting fibres of white fibrillar tissue to the deep layer of the dermis along the lateral and lower edges of the palmar fascia and to the sheaths of the flexor tendons. The
folds, therefore, which are disposed for the purpose of making the grasp secure, vary with the relative lengths of the metacarpal bones, with the mutual relations of the sheaths of the tendons, and the edge of the palmar fascia, somewhat also with the inser tion of the palmaris brevis muscle. The sulci are emphasized because the subcutaneous fat, which is copious in order to pad the skin for the purpose of firmness of holding, being restricted to the intervals between the lines along which the skin is tied down, makes these intervals project, and these are the monticuli. The swelling of the mountain of Venus is simply the indication of the size of the muscles of the ball of the thumb, and can be increased by their exercise. Similarly the hypothenar muscles for the little finger underlie the three ulnar marginal mountains, the sizes of which depend on their development and on the prominence of the pisiform bone.
That these purely mechanical arrangements have any psychic, occult or predictive meaning is a fantastic imagination, which seems to have a peculiar attraction for certain types of mind, and as there can be no fundamental hypothesis of correlation, its discussion does not lie within the province of reason.
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