This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart;
Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires
A sequester from liberty, fasting, and prayer,
Much castigation, exercise devout;
For there’s a young and sweating devil here
That commonly rebels.”
In febrile diseases, the palm is hot and dry; and the same obtains when the vegetative functions are languid, or in exhaustion from debauchery or other causes. As Shakspeare has it in the “Twelfth Night,”—
“Maria. Now, sir, thought is free: I pray you bring Your hand to the buttery bar, and let it drink.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Wherefore, sweetheart? What’s your metaphor?
Maria. It’s dry, sir.”
According to the old chiroscopists, the life-line—that is, the furrow at the line of demarcation between the ball of the thumb and the palm—measures by its length the term of existence; it is certainly more strongly marked in strong and healthy than in weak and sickly persons. A pallid or yellowish colour of the furrows marking the palm is indicative of disease.
Thumb.—The thumb deserves particular notice in treating of the hand. It is the presence of a thumb that imparts to the hand of the higher animals its character of superiority. It is the higher developement and greater mobility of the human hand that render it so much more perfect than that of the ape: “L’animal supérieur est dans la main, l’homme est dans la pouce,” says D’Arpentigny. The thumb being, then, the characteristic element of the human hand—the part last developed and most strongly typical of its superiority over that of the lower animals, the perfect formation of this part of the hand must be regarded as a sign of the character of the species being well marked,—of a strong, active individuality; while the reverse obtains when it is small and rudimentary. The ball of the thumb is made up of strong muscles, and in it the motor function of the hand is, as it were, concentrated. It is the mons Veneris of the old chiroscopists; the expression of “la volonté raisonnée,” of decision, perception, and the logical faculty, according to D’Arpentigny, who confirms the old opinion above alluded to, remarking, “Aimer c’est vouloir, et vouloir c’est aimer.” Persons with a small thumb are ruled by the heart, those with a large by the head. The motive hand is always furnished with a large thumb, and hence, probably, the origin of the term, from domare, to rule (Italian), Daumen (German); power and objective force being imparted by it to the hand.