770 REPORT— 1897. 



of reason in man, and he speaks of it as an instrument applicable to every art and 

 occasion, as well of peace as of war. It is, he says, the best constructed of all 

 prehensile organs, and he gives a careful description of how both the hand as a whole 

 and the individual digits, more especially the thumb, are brought into use in the 

 act of grasping.* Galen does not indeed enter into the minute anatomical details 

 which have been emphasised by more recent writers on the subject, but by none 

 of these has the use of the hand and its association with man's higher intelligence 

 been more clearly and more eloquently expressed than by the Greek physician and 

 philosopher seventeen centuries ago. 



By the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's ever-memorable treatise ' On 

 the Origin of Species,' an enormous impulse was given to the study of the anatomy 

 of man in comparison with the lower animals, more especially with the apes. By 

 many anatomists the study was pursued with the view of pointing out the 

 resemblances in structure between men and apes ; by a more limited number to 

 show wherein they did not correspond. I well remember a course of lectures 

 on the comparative characters of man delivered thirty-five years ago by my old 

 master. Professor John Goodsir, in which, when speaking of the hand of man and 

 apes, he dwelt upon sundry features of difference between them.* The human 

 hand, he said, is the only one which possesses a thumb capable of a free and 

 complete movement of opposition. It may be hollowed into a cup and it can 

 grasp a sphere. It is an instrument of manipulation co-extensive with human 

 activity. The ape's hand again is an imperfect hand, with a short and feeble 

 thumb, and with other clearly defined points of difference and inferiority to that 

 of man. It can embrace a cylinder, as the branch of a tree, and is principally 

 subservient to the arboreal habits of the animal. Its fingers grasp the cylinder in 

 a series of spirals. 



Here then is an important difference in the manipulative arrangements of the 

 two hands, the advantage being with the hand of man, in regard to the greater 

 variety of movement and adaptability, to co-ordinate it with his reasoning 

 faculties. As showing the acuteness of perception of Galen and his complete 

 recognition of a fundamental feature of the human hand, he also dwells on the 

 hand being able to form a circle around a sphere, so as to grasp it on every side, 

 and to touch it with every part of itself, whilst it can also securely hold objects that 

 possess plane or concave surfaces. So impressed was the old Greek wi-iter with 

 the fitness of the hand to discharge the duties imposed on it by the higher intelli- 

 gence of man that, pagan though he was, he regarded its construction as evidence 

 of design in nature, and as a sincere hymn to the praise and honour of the Deity. 



It is not my intention to dwell upon the multitudinous details of those features 

 of structure which distinguish man from other vertebrates, for these have been 

 considered and described by numerous writers. The leading structural differentiae 

 constitute the merest commonplaces of the human anatomist, and are already 

 sufficiently imprinted on the popular mind. But it may not be out of place to 

 refer to certain aspects of the subject which are not so generally known, and 

 the significance of which has been brought into greater prominence by recent 

 researches. 



If we compare the new-born infant with the young of vertebrates generally, 

 we find & striking difference in its capability of immediately assuming the 

 characteristic attitude of the species. A fish takes its natural posture and 

 moves freely in its element as soon as it is hatched. A chicken can stand 

 and walk when it is liberated from the eo;g, though, from its wings not 

 being developed, it is not at once able to fly. A lamb or calf can assume 

 the quadrupedal position a few minutes after its birth. But, as we all know, 

 the infant is the most helpless of all young vertebrates, and is months before it 

 can stand on two feet and move freely on them. During the period of transition, 



' See passages translated in Dr. Kidd's Bridgewater Treatise, 1833, and Dr. J. 

 Finlayson's Essay on Galen, Glasgow, 1895. 



' ' On the Dignity of the Human Body,' in Anatomical Memoirs, by John Goodsir, 

 vol. 1. p. 238, Edinburgh, 1868. 



