4
Do Our
Hands
Hold the
Key to
Our Future
Health?
Graphology and palmistry,
long considered superstitions
of the Middle Ages, are
now under study as possible
diagnostic tools for cancer,
heart disease, and mental illness
By EVAN M. WYLIE
IN AN EXAMINATION room at
a medical center in the'
South, a child extends the palm
of his hand to the doctor, who
scans its lines for clues to the
boy's heart ailment
In another laboratory in a North
east city, .a specially trained diagnos
tician peers intently at the handwriting
of a 50-year-old woman in an effort to
determine whether the lump in her
breast is cancerous.
In Michigan, doctors at a mental
hospital check the fingertips of pa
tients with mental illness, comparing
them with those of criminals and law
abiding citizens.
Were it not for the hum of electronic
apparatus and the modern design of
the buildings, you might well imagine
that these physicians were practicing
in the Middle Ages, when palm read
ing and handwriting analysis were
used by soothsayers to prophesy men's
futures. But medical activities de
scribed above are being carried on in
modern laboratories which are among
the most respected in the world.
The first American reports on the
value of handwriting in early diagnosis
of cancer came from a conservative ,
hospital in New York City. A recent
report on the hand's palm-line patterns
as a sign of inherited heart defects
came from Tulane University's school
of medicine and subsequently was pub
lished in the Journal of the American
Medical Association.
Analysis of handwriting specimens
dates back to the Romans and earlier.
In the second century A.D., the his
torian Suetonius claimed he could dis
cern the penny-pinching proclivities of
the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar
from his crabbed script.
In the 1890s, a physiologist stated '
the now obvious truth : that the deli
cate nerve-muscle interplay necessary
to penmanship originates in the cen
tral nervous system and therefore
indicates what is going on there.
With the acceptance of the psycho
analytic methods of Freud, handwrit
ing was subjected to symbolic analysis.
Modern psychologists have found hand
writing analysis as helpful as the
famed Rorschach inkblot test fre
quently used for detecting emotional
maturity or abnormality.
Medically, the study of handwritng
has been focused on emotional and
mental disorders, although it has not
been limited to that area. A psychia
trist and a handwriting expert have
examined signatures of Franklin D.
Roosevelt over the last decade of his
life. They claim to have detected signs
of his fatal circulatory ailment as early
as 1940. Other authorities in the field
deride such diagnosis made after the
fact. But the two investigators contend
that they can show signs of President
Eisenhower's heart attack in his sig
natures a month before the event and
that Defense Secretary James For
resters suicidal depression was mani
fest in his penmanship a year before
he took his own life.
In other medical areas, there have
been handwriting tests to discriminate
among some types of Parkinsonism
(shaking palsy) and between harden
ing of the arteries that feed the heart
and those that nourish the brain. A
famed American graphologist, Klara
Roman, has reported marked differ
ences in the handwriting of patients
suffering from high blood pressure as
compared with those crippled with!
arthritis. Other diseases, notably tu-l
berculosis, some psychoses, and epi-f
lepsy, also seem to indicate a loss ot
delicate nerve control over fine mus
cular coordination.
The Ooal
Decoda Um Hidden
Meanings af
Handwriting
The big problem of handwriting!
analysts has been the multitude oi
signs to be observed and interpreted,
Such factors as rigidity, reduction inf
size of characters, tremor, changes inl
pressure and inking, loss of free flow,
and many others have been noted and n
variously interpreted.
rttotoGtAms tr stan haiiis
fimlly Wwkllf. March 31. 1MJ
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